Indiana Jones' Best Romance Is Also His Creepiest (2024)

Indiana Jones is renowned for many things, such as punching Nazis and saving the world. He's also known for his tumultuous relationship with Marion Ravenwood. Their notable age gap has been the subject of controversy, but it doesn't seem too extreme at first glance. Unfortunately for fans of the beloved Indiana Jones films, looking a little deeper into the history of their relationship reveals several troubling details.

Marion is, arguably, the best and most prominent Indiana Jones love interest. She's the daughter of a renowned archeologist and treasure hunter named Abner Ravenwood. Of course, he works in the same field as the one and only Dr. Jones. He was even one of Jones' mentors. Marion never showed any interest in the area until she met Indy, and eventually became an archeology icon in her own right. But while she's been a prominent part of the titular character's adventures, she's also involved in an uncomfortable and, at times, actively problematic relationship with him. That's very much by design — Raiders of the Lost Ark shows Indy as a flawed man who learns to atone — but it definitely paints the hero in a less-than-admirable light.

Updated on August 26, 2024, by Robert Vaux: The complexities of Indy and Marion's relationship — and its most troubling details — as a key part of the film's story. The article has been updated to discuss how the film addresses its protagonist's dark side and the ways that Marion's subsequent appearances in the franchise complicate that. Its formatting has also been updated to meet current CBR standards.

Indy's Womanizing Is Presented as a Character Flaw

Indiana Jones was conceived as a flawed hero — someone who is good at his job but possesses multiple shortcomings that he must learn to overcome in the course of his adventures. Some of it comes out in his willingness to trade in illegal or shady artifacts, as well as his signature raiding of tombs and crypts in acts that can justifiably be described as grave-robbing. Ostensibly, it's all in the name of science (he famously believes that what he collects "belongs in a museum") but many of his adventures entail a slow understanding of his larger responsibilities. He has to learn to give up the objects he's seeking for the sake of a greater good.

He's also a womanizer. The character was inspired by the James Bond movies, which featured a new leading lady with each new outing. The Indiana Jones movies reveal that trait in a decidedly less flattering light. The first three films had three different lovers for Indy. Shanghai showgirl Willie Scott appeared in the prequel Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, set a year before he reunites with Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Clearly, they had broken up by then. The same pattern appears in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as Indy falls for the beautiful Elsa Schneider two years after Raiders, which suggests that he and Marion are no longer an item. Canonically, the two have been off-again, on-again for most of their relationship, though it still leaves Indy eager to hop into bed with a pretty face, who in this case turns out to be a Nazi agent.

All of it paints a less-than-flattering picture of the swashbuckling archaeologist, which is very much by design. The Last Crusade actively plays on his impulsive nature around women, and Raiders is written in part as a personal atonement story, as Indy gives up the Ark of the Covenant itself for the sake of the woman he did wrong. It constitutes his saving grace, though as the movies go on, it's clear he still has some work to do. That becomes even more apparent once the details of his original tryst with Marion come to light.

Indiana Jones And Marion Have A Complicated Timeline

Marion and Indy never had the simplest relationship, and the canon films tend to jump around a lot. Non-canon sources fill in several blanks. According to James Luceno's 2008 sourcebook Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Guide, they met in 1925 while she and her father Abner were hunting the Ark of the Covenant. Unfortunately for Abner, Indy wooed Marion. So, 1925 isn't just the beginning of their professional relationship — it's where their romance starts. It ends badly, and she spends the rest of her father's life traveling the world with him, ending up in The Raven bar where Raiders of the Lost Ark picks up with her. One can assume that the years between 1925 and 1936 saw little to no interaction between the two. Indy essentially ghosted her while their adventures took them in different directions, and as she says in Raiders, "I've learned to hate you in the last ten years."

Aside from both Indy and Marion having tendencies to leave randomly, their relationship is problematic. Marion’s appearance in Raiders of the Lost Ark reveals she's 25 years old. So, if the clock is turned back a bit to the point Marion and Indiana meet, she's about 15 or 16 years old and a decade younger than Harrison Ford's Indy. As mentioned, Indy woos her shortly after their meeting, and they seemingly begin a romantic relationship. That is undoubtedly an extremely inappropriate dynamic. While some fans of Indy may argue that he was unaware, the script points to the opposite.

For starters, he knew that Marion was the young daughter of his former mentor, Abel. He should've had some understanding of how old she was from his relationship with her father. During one of their reunion scenes, there's a fight between them. The argument even has a furious Marion yelling,

The response to this statement by Indy is sickening and points the blame at Marion with the simple, "You knew what you were doing." It's made clear that Indiana Jones isn't much of a hero — but he also isn't the best human being. It gets worse. An early scene in class — in which a young female student writes the words "Love You" on her eyelids — takes a darker turn with a number of the movie's cut scenes, which suggest that Indy has inappropriate relationships with his students.

The biggest tell comes in the scene when Marcus visits Indy in his home to tell him he's cleared to go after the Ark. Indy pours champagne from an already opened bottle with two glasses already set out. The novelization by Campbell Black further illuminates that mystery: he was seducing the "Love You" student, who jumped out the window when Marcus arrived, leaving Indy to offer Marcus the glass meant for her. It points to a troubling pattern of behavior that doesn't improve once his relationship with Marion ends.

Marion And Indiana Jones' Relationship Was Always Problematic

Raiders of the Lost Ark doesn't sugar-coat Indy's behavior, nor his shabby treatment of Marion. He even leaves her in the hands of the Nazis at one point. That slowly changes as they face peril after peril, and reaches a point where he's willing to leave the Ark in the Nazis' hands to keep her safe. With the Ark ultimately as lost at the end of the film as it was in the beginning, the narrative turns into an extended act of atonement until Indy can let go of the thing he wants the most for the sake of the woman he's badly hurt. And despite their obvious chemistry, their final scene on the steps in Washington, D.C. doesn't end with a kiss or an embrace. Instead, she offers to buy him a drink, and they walk off arm in arm. It's remarkably chaste, strongly suggesting that Marion hasn't fallen into his arms. She forgives him, but that doesn't extend beyond a kind word and a drink.

If Marion had never returned to Indiana Jones, there wouldn't be any more to tell. But subsequent entries undo the apparently platonic understanding they come to at the end of Raiders and return to the dysfunction of their early days. According to the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they were going to get married in 1937. Unfortunately, Indy gets cold feet before the wedding, and he's the one to leave her and their unborn child. They would be apart for the next two decades, and when they reunite in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (which takes place in 1957), she's not exactly thrilled to see him. Nevertheless, they reconcile during the events of that film and get married at the end. They fall apart yet again when their son Mutt is killed in the Vietnam War, only to reconcile yet again (presumably for the last time) in the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

None of the accounts of their relationship imply stability or long-term happiness, and while their attraction to each other is strong, it comes with a lot of baggage. Indy himself seems to be the instigator of most of the damage — flighty, unable to commit, and with a wandering eye that belies his earnest yet fitful efforts to do right by her. All of that arrives on top of the dark reality that their relationship began with a grown man seducing a teenager. The films work to incorporate his shortcomings into their narrative — Raiders, in particular, paints it as an unconscionable character flaw — but it doesn't change his culpability. And for all the damage he does, Marion just can't quit him: enabling his behavior over decades and resulting in a surprisingly dysfunctional relationship. The two are great onscreen together, but looking between the lines shows the cracks in their romance that remain throughout their long and tangled history.

The Indiana Jones saga is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+.

Indiana Jones

Indiana Jonesis an Americanmedia franchiseconsisting of five films and a prequel television series, along with games, comics, and tie-in novels, that depicts the adventures ofDr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr.(portrayed in all films byHarrison Ford), afictionalprofessorof archeology.

Created by

George Lucas

First Film

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Latest Film

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

First Episode Air Date

March 4, 1992

Cast

Harrison Ford , Karen Allen , Paul Freeman , John Rhys-Davies , Ke Huy Quan , Alfred Molina