Night in The Woods theory!
***SPOILER WARNING****
Also sorry for my poor grammar, I’m too lazy to care rn
When you are in the mine and talking to the cult dudes, the one talking talks in a special way, like "s'pose" instead of "suppose". And at the end when Mae talks to her dad and he talks about how he hates his job, he talks like that too! And the way he describes things is exactly like the other dude. like "job s'pose to pay you well" "you're s'pose to be able to live" and that other dude was also crowing about keeping things alive and being able to live in the town. I mean the main gang DID trap the cult members in the cave, but I like to believe that they got out somehow and now afterwards, the day after the sacrifice hole in the ground had been fucked over, Mae's dad finally comes clean, like he's finally being honest about how he feels, maybe because he knows they're fucked. Also all the cult members are hinting at the fact they used to be miners before the mine shut down, AND Mae's dad was a miner