Indiana Jones 5 Director Breaks Down Film’s Emotional Ending

Indiana Jones returned to the screen this weekend for this fifth and final adventure: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The film acts as a swan song for Harrison Ford’s iconic explorer, and gives him an ending that fits as a finale for his story. Of course, that ending doesn’t come without plenty of emotion, setting up Indy’s relationship with a new character and resurrecting a vital relationship from the past. WARNING: This article contains major spoilers from Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny! Continue reading at your own risk…

After ending up 2,000 years in the past, Indy decides he wants to stay in the past where the world makes sense to him. Helena, his goddaughter, doesn’t let him, knocking him out with a punch and bringing him back to 1969. Director James Mangold recently spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about Helena’s big decision, and why it was the right choice for both her and Indy.

“Because she loves him and she needs a father. She needs him. If the movie has anything to say, it’s on the simplest level,” Mangold explained. “You have a father who’s lost a son and a daughter who’s lost a father, and both have become lost in the world. Helena is lost through cynicism, and Indy is lost through a kind of malaise and a feeling of being obsolete. And so to me, they’re in desperate need of each other while they’re battling each other through most of the picture. They’re also in desperate need of each other’s influence, and I never saw Helena as without a heart. I always saw her as wounded by the fact that Indy vanished from her life at a certain point when she needed someone like that. She says to him, ‘Godfather, what does that really mean anyway?’ but she was the living definition of someone needing a godfather. Her father died when she was young and the godfather never showed. And so this movie became a chance for this particular father to prove himself again, and in his own way, climb out of the grief he felt about his own loss.”

The Return of Marion Ravenwood

The final scenes of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also bring Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood back into the fold. She and Indy got married at the end of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but they split up after the death of their son, Henry Jones III (aka Mutt Williams). 

Marion returns at the end of Dial of Destiny and the film recreates a version of the “kissing wounds” scene the two characters shared in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

“Yeah, [writers] Jez and John Henry [Butterworth] came up with that. When we came up with the idea of Marion coming back at the end, that idea came to Jez and John Henry pretty early and was pretty brilliant,” Mangold said of the scene. “And we shot it pretty early, because we shot Karen’s scenes in the second or third month of production, and the power of her coming in really landed. I mean, it landed more when I could see the whole journey in getting to that scene and bringing those two together. But Karen literally came to set and worked two days. She landed and just dropped in, and the chemistry between her and Harrison was, of course, immediate. It’s something they had developed over many years.”

The iconic Harrison Ford returned for one last adventure as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiered in theaters on June 30th. Lucasfilm’s latest film in the long-running franchise sees Dr. Jones team up with his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in a race against nefarious forces to secure a powerful artifact. The duo will go up against the mysterious former Nazi-turned-NASA scientist Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), and the film also features stars Boyd Holbrook, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, and John Rhys Davies. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is directed by James Mangold and is Ford’s final appearance as the iconic archeologist.