Indiana Jones recap: the story so far

No. 01 · 1981 · Film

Raiders of the Lost Ark recap

In 1936, after narrowly escaping a booby-trapped temple in Peru, only to lose a golden idol to his French rival Rene Belloq, Indiana Jones returns to teaching. Two US Army intelligence officers tell him the Nazis are searching for the Ark of the Covenant, which carried the Ten Commandments and is said to make any army invincible. Indy travels to Nepal to find his old mentor's daughter, Marion Ravenwood, who has a medallion, the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, needed to find the Ark. Marion, still angry at Indy from years before, joins him after Nazis led by the sadistic Toht burn down her bar. In Cairo, they team up with Indy's friend Sallah, and Marion appears to die in a truck explosion. Indy finds the true location of the Ark, the Well of the Souls, full of snakes, and finds Marion alive, but Belloq and the Nazis seal them in the tomb.

How Raiders of the Lost Ark ends

The Nazis open the Ark on an island, and the spirits inside kill them all while Indy and Marion survive by keeping their eyes shut. Indy and Marion escape the tomb, Indy chases the Ark on a truck, and later they are captured on the island. Back in Washington, the government says "top men" are studying the Ark, which is crated and stored in a vast warehouse.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 02 · 1984 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom recap

In 1935, a year before Raiders, Indiana Jones escapes a gangster's nightclub in Shanghai with the singer Willie Scott and his young sidekick Short Round. Their plane, owned by the gangster, is abandoned mid-air, and they jump out on an inflatable raft and land in India. A poor village begs Indy to recover its sacred Sankara stone, stolen by the Thuggee, and its children, who have been taken. At the Pankot Palace, they meet the young Maharaja and his prime minister, and find secret tunnels into a temple where the Thuggee priest Mola Ram tears out a man's heart and sacrifices him in a pit of lava. The cult is forcing the village children to dig for the last two Sankara stones. Indy is captured and forced to drink a potion that puts him under Mola Ram's control, and Willie is chosen to be sacrificed.

How Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ends

Indy rescues the children and the stones, and Mola Ram falls to his death from a rope bridge, eaten by crocodiles. Short Round breaks Indy's trance with a torch. They free the children and escape on mine carts. On the bridge, Indy calls on Shiva and the stones burn through their bag; Mola Ram falls into the river. British soldiers arrive, and Indy returns the stone and the children to the village.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 03 · 1989 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade recap

A prologue shows a teenage Indy in 1912 trying to save the Cross of Coronado from robbers, earning his hat, his fear of snakes and his whip. In 1938, the businessman Walter Donovan tells Indy that his father, Henry Jones Sr., has disappeared while searching for the Holy Grail, and Indy receives Henry's Grail diary in the mail. Indy and his old friend Marcus Brody go to Venice, where Dr. Elsa Schneider is working with Henry. Indy finds a knight's tomb in the catacombs and learns that Henry is held by the Nazis in a castle in Austria. He rescues his father, and they learn that Elsa and Donovan are working for the Nazis. Indy and Henry, never close, argue across Europe, going to Berlin to recover the diary and fleeing on a zeppelin. They follow the diary to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, where Sallah joins them, and the Nazis capture Brody.

How Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ends

Indy finds the Grail, saves his dying father with it, and the temple collapses as Elsa reaches for the cup; they ride off into the sunset. Donovan shoots Henry to force Indy through the traps. Donovan drinks from the wrong cup and dies, and the ancient knight guarding it tells Indy the Grail cannot leave. Elsa falls, Henry tells Indy to let it go, and they ride away with Sallah and Brody.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 04 · 1992 · Series · optional

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles recap

Most episodes open in 1992, when Indiana Jones, 93 and living in New York, tells a stranger a story from his youth (in one bookend, played by Harrison Ford at 50). The story then shifts back. In season 1, starting in 1908, a ten-year-old Indy travels the world with his father, Professor Henry Jones Sr., his mother Anna and his tutor, Miss Seymour, on a lecture tour, meeting people such as T. E. Lawrence in Egypt. The same season introduces the teenage Indy, played by Sean Patrick Flanery, who joins Pancho Villa's army in Mexico in 1916 with a Belgian friend, Remy Baudouin, and then goes to Europe to fight in the First World War. In season 2, the Flanery stories take over: Indy serves in the Belgian army on the Western Front, works as a spy, and flies against the Red Baron, with stories set in Africa and Russia too. Later episodes follow him into his early twenties, including Chicago in 1920, where he meets Al Capone, Eliot Ness and Louis Armstrong. The show is meant as a historical education, with each story built around real people and events of the 1900s to 1920s.

How The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles ends

ABC cancelled the series in 1993 before all its episodes aired, and it ended with four TV films on the Family Channel, from 1994 to 1996, following Indy at about 21. There is no single finale. The episodes were later re-edited into 22 films, The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. The story stops short of the 1930s, before Raiders.

No. 05 · 2008 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull recap

In 1957, Indiana Jones and his friend Mac are kidnapped by Soviet agents led by Colonel Irina Spalko and taken to the warehouse in Nevada where the Ark is stored, to find the remains of an alien. Indy escapes, survives a nuclear test by hiding in a lead-lined fridge, and is suspected by the FBI of being a communist. At his college, a young greaser, Mutt Williams, tells him his old colleague Harold Oxley has found a crystal skull in Peru and vanished, and Mutt's mother has been kidnapped. In Peru, Indy and Mutt find Oxley's trail and the crystal skull, then are captured by the Soviets, along with Oxley, who has gone mad, and Mutt's mother, who is Marion Ravenwood. Mac turns out to be a double agent. Marion tells Indy that Mutt is his son.

How Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ends

Spalko is destroyed when the aliens she wants to learn from share too much knowledge, Indy and the others escape as the alien ship leaves, and Indy marries Marion. They chase through the jungle and reach Akator, the lost city, where thirteen crystal skeletons, beings from another dimension, wake. Mac falls into the vortex. At the wedding, Mutt goes to put on Indy's hat, and Indy takes it back.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.

No. 06 · 2023 · Film

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny recap

In 1944, Indy and his friend Basil Shaw try to recover the Lance of Longinus from the Nazis, and find half of Archimedes' Antikythera, a dial said to locate fissures in time. In 1969, Indy is retiring from his New York college, separated from Marion after their son Mutt died in the Vietnam War. Basil's daughter Helena, Indy's goddaughter, asks for the dial, then steals it to sell. Jurgen Voller, the Nazi physicist from 1944, now working for the US space program as Dr. Schmidt, sends killers after them, framing Indy for murders. Indy follows Helena to Tangier, where she tries to sell it, with her young sidekick Teddy, and then goes in search of the other half with the help of his old friend Sallah and the diver Renaldo. Voller plans to use the dial to go back to 1939 and kill Hitler to win the war for Germany.

How Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ends

The dial sends Indy, Helena and Voller's plane back to the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, where Voller dies, and Helena brings a wounded Indy home to Marion. Voller's calculations ignored continental drift, so the fissure leads to Archimedes' time instead of 1939. Indy wants to stay with Archimedes, but Helena knocks him out and takes him back. In New York, Marion returns to their apartment and they reconcile.

Post-credits scenes

No. There is no post-credits scene.