Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Monkey.Director Osgood Perkins’s The Monkey is filled with odd moments that boggle the mind, and they don’t just include all the elaborate and gruesome deaths caused by the film’s killer toy. In a movie where a wind-up monkey murders people by playing a drum, one of the weirdest things in 2025’s The Monkey is when Hal and his son see a ghostly figure riding a pale horse on the street.
While Hal’s meeting with this eerie character in The Monkey is strange, the movie sets up this scene with a Biblical reference earlier in the film. The appearance of this spectral figure was surprising enough, but the way Hal reacts to it stands out the most. This bizarre, allegorical scene at the end of The Monkey’s scary and violent story both underscores the evil toy’s destructive impact and displays how much Hal has changed in his quest to stop its reign of terror.
Hal & Petey See Death On A Horse In The Monkey’s Ending
Hal & Petey Encounter More Than One Supernatural Enтιтy In The Monkey
After the monkey uses its power to kill countless people all at once, including Bill, both Hal and Petey take the cursed toy and drive through town, which has been left in utter chaos. Though Hal and Petey are ready to leave all this devastation behind, they have one last paranormal encounter. But just before they leave town, Hal stops the car at a street intersection when he and Petey see the spirit of Death riding on a pale horse, which stops at a traffic light next to them.
Death on a horse isn’t the only weird thing Hal and Petey see at the end of the film. Nevertheless, Death seems very out of place at this moment, as the supernatural occurrences that occurred in the movie seem more grounded in reality. The way the monkey killed people made their deaths look like horrible coincidences to everyone else. But Death riding a horse at a street intersection defies explanation, leaving Hal and Petey understandably stunned by its presence.
The Meaning Of Death’s Appearance In The Monkey
Death’s Appearance Underlines The Biblical Amount Of Death In The Monkey
Though Death doesn’t appear as a ghostly horseman in Stephen King’s version of The Monkey, it is actually a humorous reference to the Bible’s Book of Revelation. In Revelation 6:8, Death is named as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who is said to appear at the end of the world. It’s fitting that the horseman Death would appear to Hal this way in The Monkey, as the тιтular toy embodies death’s random and destructive nature as it carries out several catastrophes.
It’s unclear how many people the cursed toy monkey killed with its explosion of power. Nevertheless, the monkey still unleashed an apocalyptic level of death that ravaged the town. Planes fell from the sky, surfboards impaled people, and baby carriages were set on fire. Seeing all this, one bystander would’ve understandably ᴀssumed the world was ending. Death’s appearance at the end of the film only underlines the immense amount of destruction that the monkey created all at once.
The Monkey Set Up Death’s Appearance With A Bible Verse
Hal Seeing Death Is A Callback To An Earlier Scene In The Monkey
Out of context, Hal and Petey seeing Death on a horse is a head-scratching moment, even for a dark comedy like The Monkey. However, this supernatural encounter comes long after Hal nervously recites Revelation 6:8 in an awkward conversation with his boss. Though this Biblical reference was accidental, it still emphasizes how much death has played a part in Hal’s life thanks to the monkey and its power.
The use of Revelations 6:8 also foreshadows Hal meeting Death itself and the events that preceded it at the end of the movie. In this verse of the Bible, Death is described as a figure riding on a pale horse with “all Hell” following him. Just as Death rode past the town after the monkey all but destroyed it, so too did Hal drive through the streets as he carried the toy beast that brought Hell itself to the townspeople.
Why Hal Nods At Death In The Monkey’s Ending
Hal Acknowledges And Accepts Death At The End Of The Monkey
When Hal locks eyes with the horseman Death at the end of The Monkey, he simply nods his head at the pale specter, who nods back at him before riding away. It’s a humorous moment that fits well with the dark, comedic tone of The Monkey. However, this silent exchange between Hal and Death shows how much the former has grown throughout the film in his quest to stop the killer monkey.
Hal’s interaction with the horseman shows how he has finally accepted death as a natural part of life and let go of his fear.
Instead of fearing Death like he feared the toy monkey for so long, Hal simply acknowledges its presence and lets it pᴀss. Hal’s interaction with the horseman shows how he has finally accepted death as a natural part of life and let go of his fear. This is also conveyed by Hal’s decision to watch over the monkey, accepting that it won’t leave just like death won’t go away, and that he must carry that burden to make sure the toy won’t be used to kill anyone else.
Since Hal has accepted death, he has also learned not to let his fear keep him away from his family, whom he kept at a distance in case the monkey returned. As a result, in the film’s final scene, Hal offers to go dancing with Petey, just like his mother used to when he was a child. This request shows how parent-child roles have been switched, with Hal finally accepting his role as father to Petey and spending more time with him.
Hal’s Biblical encounter with the horseman Death at the end of The Monkey shows how the former has grown in this wacky and gory film. Just as he learned to accept the toy monkey as a part of his life, the way he acknowledges Death and lets it ride away shows that he has embraced how death is an inevitable part of life. The growth he conveys in this scene allows him to reconnect with his family and to be the kind of father to Petey that he wished he had growing up.
