Indiana Jones Spoilers: What Happened to Shia LeBeouf's Mutt Williams?

Okay, with that MAJOR SPOILER WARNING out of the way, let's dive into how Shia LaBeouf's character from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull factors into the brand new sequel. For those who forgot about that 2008 film, it revealed that Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones and Karen Allen's Marion Ravenwood had a child together -- LaBeouf's Mutt Williams -- one Indy didn't know about until Mutt was a young man.

Original Dial of Destiny screenwriter David Koepp confirmed as far back as 2017 that LaBeouf's character wouldn't be in the movie ... and that factor remained in place through the finished product. At the film's premiere director James Mangold also confirmed Shia's absence, saying he instead chose to focus on the relationship between Jones and an "intrepid female character" played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It should be noted that the time the film was announced and throughout its production, LaBeouf has had a series of legal issues, abuse allegations and entered treatment.

But just because he's not physically in the film doesn't mean Mutt is absent altogether. In fact, the character plays a vital role in the plot.

Early in the film, Jones reunites with Waller-Bridge's Helena Shaw -- Indy's goddaughter and the daughter of an old acquaintance who's searching for the titular artifact, a dial which allegedly grants its user the power of time travel. When asked what he'd do with that power himself, he tells her he'd "stop my son from enlisting" to fight in the Vietnam War and tell him "he was gonna die." Jones adds that Mutt "signed up to piss me off," leaving him feeling responsible for the youth's death.

Viewers later learn that Mutt died in the war, with the grief of his death tearing apart Indy and Marion's marriage. The split led to Jones living alone in an apartment, where separation papers are clearly seen on his refrigerator.

By the end of the film, Jones does get to travel back in time -- but has no control over where (or when) he travels to. He never gets his chance to prevent Mutt from heading to war, but does come to some sort of peace with the situation and even reunites with Marion, with Karen Allen making a lovely cameo in the movie's final moments.

Speaking with the Los Angeles Times about her brief appearance, Allen said she had no idea whether she'd be in the script for over a year and a half. Eventually, she was recruited to appear, saying she was "very happy that at least in the very end, she came back and there was a reuniting of those characters."

"It was very easy and he seemed so happy that I was there," she said of Ford. "It meant a lot to both of us to bring these two characters together. Bringing the first film back in the last moment of the film, it felt good, it felt right."

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in theaters now.