Ah, yeah, he is looking at Marion I suppose, so it could be him acknowledging his mother in action for the first time.

I can imagine it would be hard to trim this down, what with there not being a cut-away from Mutt, as you say. Would it be possible to somehow cut straight into him asking the question right after we see the shot of him sliding out of the truck-hatch? This would be opposed to trimming the look down; just cut it completely right into him asking the question. Or would that just not work at all?

By the way, I'm seriously digging your colour correction! It's looking really nice - not really finding it any 'brighter' than the original cut!