“Throw me the idol! I’ll throw you the lightsaber!”
Let’s cut to the chase. I have rock-solid in-canon proof that Indiana Jones and Han Solo exist in the same shared universe (even if they’re from different galaxies).
Not only that, I’ve worked out a theory of how specifically that’s possible, with the kind of twists and turns and surprises you’d expect from a blockbuster. We’re going deep here, not just into fan lore of two distinct story worlds, but also ancient human history and, oddly enough, the nuances of tentpole movie marketing that made it possible for me to discover all of this nearly a year before anyone else ever could.
A few years back, while working on the pre-release marketing campaign for a major film to be named momentarily, I came across an Easter Egg buried in about 50,000 photos from production that made me scream out loud in excitement, set my heart pounding, and sparked my imagination. And since only a few people actually noticed this little Easter Egg, I feel it’s my duty to fully explain it and what it means. We’ll get to all of the implications shortly.
But first, a little setup.
When you’re marketing a movie or series, one of the things you get access to is the unit photography. Unit, for those who don’t know, is a collection of stills shot by a photographer dedicated to the task from pre-production to wrap. Even the smallest-budgeted titles will capture thousands of unit photos. The bigger titles can have multiple unit photographers, each focused on different aspects of a shoot (main unit, second unit, marketing gallery, PR, behind the scenes, etc.), resulting in hundreds of thousands of images.
On a high-security title like, say a Star Wars movie, unit photography is very closely guarded because it’s a minute-by-minute document of literally every single shot, whether it ends up in the film or not. An enterprising fan, if they got hold of the unit, could easily reconstruct the entire film or series and know nearly everything that happens, even if they can’t hear the dialogue, see the finished VFX, or understand the correct order of events. Every action scene, every kiss, every surprise twist, every shocking death is all captured in unit photography.
On the other hand, unit also captures seemingly mundane things like set decoration, costumes, props, background plates, all absolutely essential not just to production and post, but also marketing and PR. But on a really juicy title, even the so-called mundane shots can serve up major spoilers, or in some cases, truly enticing details that could rock a fan’s world.
I had an opportunity to work on some ideas for an upcoming film, specifically to develop what’s called an international theming kit. While that sounds dull, it’s actually pretty cool: a theming kit is a set of concepts and designs for international territories to use in building real-world experiences both small and large. For instance, for the film Warcraft (which I didn’t work on), the studio created a massive 3-story museum-like space that was staged in large-scale malls across Asia (where, perhaps coincidentally, the film showed its strongest returns). For Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (which I did work on), we designed an elaborate set piece for movie theaters that included an archway entrance made from a giant cassette tape with rotating spindles, and a replica couch for fans to sit on and get a picture, among other stuff.
The film I’m talking about is Solo: A Star Wars Story, code name: RED CUP. A major Star Wars fan since childhood, I was giddy to look at the unit and also sad that I’d learn too much about the film before it was ever released in its finished form. When I opened the secure hard drive and poked around looking for inspiration, I suddenly stopped monkey-scrolling the thousands of pictures and gasped out loud.
Right-arrowing rapidly through images of Paul Bettany’s luxury cruiser where Solo reunites with Qi’ra for the first time in years over space shrimp cocktail, I instantly saw something in the set… that set my heart on fire:
The Golden Idol from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
I swear I screamed out loud in my office like a little kid finding a lost bag of Halloween candy hidden under the bed.
Or a grown-ass man finding the Raiders idol in a fricking Star Wars movie.
Just to set the context here, if Raiders of the Lost Ark and the original Star Wars Trilogy had a baby, it would be me. Raiders quite literally changed my life the first time I saw it, inspiring me to become a writer/director and sending me off to NYU film school and eventually LA, propelling me into a career in the entertainment industry. Star Wars was and is so much a part of my everyday life that my wedding cake had Han Solo and Princess Leia on it instead of the usual generic bride and groom. I named the dog Indiana, and all my tech devices are named after droids.
A dog named Indiana
So to say this was a huge deal to me, is an understatement. On a purely personal level it was a “holy shit” moment. Then after apologizing to my coworkers for the outburst, my mind went into overdrive considering the ramifications and implications.
Now bear in mind, this was nine months before the film would be released. And I couldn’t tell a single person outside of my immediate team, none of whom were half as excited about this little thermal detonator of a knowledge bomb. I was pregnant with spoilers. It was nearly impossible for me to keep my mouth shut. But I had no choice. That’s the job. Loose lips sink careers (and sometimes destroy opening box office).
Why is Chewie grinning?
But it’s been years now, and while Solo has rightfully achieved a form of cult status among fans, it’s time to finally lay it out like Indy trying to write the word “neolithic” on a chalkboard. So here goes…
First off, there’s been much speculation over the decades about Indiana Jones / Han Solo crossover content, including a fun speculative story of how the two might cross paths in a famous comic from the 1980s. But those comics weren’t meant to be canon, and even if they were, as we know, Star Wars canon was reset before the release of Force Awakens.
What actually is in canon, is Solo: A Star Wars Story. And what’s in that movie, is not just one but multiple Indiana Jones artifacts: the Idol, the Sankara Stones, and the Holy Grail. (Side note: The crystal skull also present in that environment is not the infamous Crystal Skull of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, but a callback to the earlier Han Solo Trilogy novels.)
Spoiler Alert: The Last page of “Into the Great Unknown” from Star Wars Tales #19
The Golden Idol appears as decor within Dryden Vos’ ship, the First Light, on a table among other galactic artifacts and space hors d’oeuvres. It was unmistakable, and confirmed by Frank Marshall himself to be intentionally placed as an in-joke between the film’s writers, father and son duo Lawrence and Jake Kasdan, the elder of whom wrote the original Raiders.
And what it means is equally unmistakeable. Let’s just say it out loud: Indiana Jones and Han Solo exist in the same shared universe. Which means Han Solo exists in our universe, even if he never actually visited Earth. It also means that it is in theory possible to travel from the Star Wars Galaxy to our own solar system. As further proof, remember that E.T.’s species appears in The Phantom Menace, and one fan theory suggests that E.T. was actually a Jedi (all of which also connects Indiana Jones with E.T., which isn’t quite as much of a leap, especially if you include Crystal Skull as something more than elaborate fan fiction). Could the unnamed character known as Keys actually be a grown-up Mutt?
Asogian Ambassdors to the Galactic Senate.
Can this rabbit-hole get any deeper? Yes it can, because you may even recall that hieroglyphs of R2 and C-3PO appear in the Well of the Souls, a topic that I’ll conveniently set aside for the moment.
Now that we’ve established the facts of the case, here’s how I imagine it all could have happened.
(Quick note before we get started: These days, we can’t talk about Indiana Jones without acknowledging meaningful critiques about how the films celebrate cultural appropriation and theft of tribal artifacts, and the problematic ways they sometimes present non-Western cultures and people — things my young son pointed out immediately on viewing them. This article isn’t meant to deny or address any of that, but to embark on an imaginative speculative adventure and see where it takes us.)
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a Golden Idol made its way into the collection of Dryden Vos, one of the leaders of the Crimson Dawn. Who created the idol and for what reasons, and how it came into the possession of Dryden Vos, we’ll have to wait for the standalone Golden Idol film, streaming series, or comic to know. (Maybe Lucasfilm wants to hire me to tell that story.)
One can imagine the Golden Idol is very old and very valuable even within the timeline of Solo, which means it’s likely from the Old Republic era if not even earlier. It might even carry some form of Force-like magic, ancient Star Wars-ian technology, or maybe just artistic or totemic value to some lost culture in the Outer Rim.
Between friends.
Regardless, at some point, a treasure hunter or collector or grave robber (all terms ascribed to Indy himself at one time or another) took the Golden Idol from Dryden Vos and travelled to Earth in ancient times, in or near what is now Peru.
The question then becomes when?
Raiders takes place in 1936, and the Peruvian Temple is already pretty old, but just how old could it be? Consider that the Hovitos (or more accurately, their ancestors) built an elaborate and sophisticated booby-trapped temple, which means the Golden Idol was a hugely important artifact in their religion and cultural life. And building an elaborate and sophisticated booby-trapped temple takes time. Decades, maybe even a century or more, depending on the level of technology and wherewithal of the civilization.
The Temple of the Warriors
According to the Indiana Jones Wikia, the Golden Idol is a representation of Pachamama, a fertility goddess for the Incan and Chachapoyan cultures, which is why it’s referred to as the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol (this is all news to me, by the way). The Chachapoyans really existed, and they lived in eastern Peru just like in the movie. And while there’s evidence of settlement in the region as far back as 12,000BCE, the Chachapoyans emerged into the historical record anywhere from 500–800CE. They built fortresses with walls 60 ft high and many other complex structures and settlements stretching hundreds of miles, along with spectacular burial sites with names like Laguna de las Momias (Lagoon of the Mummies), and incredible standing coffins that look like Easter Island heads.
The sarcophagi of Karaja
Now, any Raiders fan knows that it’s not the Chachapoyans who chase Indy through the jungle, firing darts at him as he leaps into the river to catch Jock’s snake-filled seaplane, but the Hovitos. This is an entirely fictional tribe, described as the descendants of the Chachapoyans, who were conquered by the Incas in 1470, who themselves were conquered shortly after that by the Spanish. So even if the Hovitos remained in control over the secret temple from the 1500s until 1936 when Indy arrived with his half-baked plan to replace the idol with a sack of sand, they were not the tribe who forged the idol or built the temple. It had to have been the Chachapoyans.
1981 Topps card for Raiders
Assume, then, that the temple was built after the monolithic city of Kuelap, an early fortress that rivals Machu Picchu in scale, with massive walls and complex structures including carved paths for their beloved guinea pigs (this was a real thing). Depending on the source, Kuelap was built sometime between 500–600CE. And let’s give them some time to mature as a society and advance their technology to the level that enables them to craft booby traps that are sensitive to light, motion and weight. Maybe another 200–300 years, although arguably any civilization that could build something as massive and complex as Kuelap itself probably already has the ability to also build a booby-trapped secret temple. But this is all just a theory to begin with, so for the sake of easy math, let’s say the Temple of the Chachapoyan Warriors was begun in the late 800s and finally completed in 936CE, exactly 1,000 years before Indy shows up. This gives them plenty of time to become technologically advanced enough to craft elaborate booby traps. And there the Golden Idol sits for a millennium, awaiting our intrepid graverobbing, culturally-appropriating, hat-wearing thief.
Kuelap, Walled Chachapoyan Fortress Built around 500–600CE
But all of this contemplating leads to more contemplations. Like, how long does it take for any object to become so important, esteemed, revered, and perhaps even feared, that the people who worship it feel compelled hide it in a booby-trapped temple that only a select few could ever survive? Belloq asks Indy the same question about his own pocket watch over drinks: how long before even this trinket becomes so valuable that men would kill for it?
Legends need time to simmer. A couple hundred years at least? A thousand years? If you go back that far, you once again find yourself at the construction of Kuelap, the walled fortress. And when these two notions converge, it takes you down a new path that further increases the meaning and value of the Golden Idol to the lost tribe of Chachapoyans.
Fortresses are built to keep things out, but they’re also sometimes built to keep things in. The walls of Kuelap have been described as the biggest and baddest fortress walls on this side of the Atlantic, and the Chachapoyans had few rivals in the region until the Inca took over.
So given all that, maybe — and humor me here — maybe the megstructure of Kuelap in and of itself was built to protect the Golden Idol — or to protect the Chachapoyans from it. And couldn’t the temple then be an even more elaborate means of protection for, or from, the Idol, or the work of a tribe that had stolen the idol from the Chachapoyans to have it for themselves? This isn’t too far off from the story of the Ark of the Covenant, which changed hands many times over the centuries, and was itself cause for its guardians to build monolithic ancient structures to house, protect and eventually hide it.
Now why on Endor would an ancient tribe think so highly of a Golden Idol that they would go to such lengths to protect it as building an entire fortress unlike anything ever constructed before in the known history of humanity? If they had knowledge from centuries of tradition, that the Idol wasn’t the work of tribal artisans… but an artifact from the stars themselves. Think about it. If any civilization in any era had taken possession of an artifact that was known to be from outer space, that artifact would hold an infinitely powerful place in that civilization’s religion and culture. It would be the source of immense wonder and pride, worthy of a fortress unlike any ever built, worthy of sacrifices and wars, and a secret temple drenched in blood.
This is where Forrestal cashed in…
But as exciting as all of this is, none of it quite explains exactly how this Golden Idol ended up in the possession of an early advanced civilization that was inspired by their knowledge of its alien provenance to do all these incredible things.
So here’s how. And it’s going to tie everything together in a weird little bow.
There’s a species in Star Wars you will instantly recognize even if you’re not a megafan, known as the Bith. The Bith are most famous for being the musicians in the Cantina Band, aka Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. And they’re instantly recognizable because they are, for all intents and purposes, classic Gray aliens of UFO lore.
Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes
I’ll let that sink in for a minute. The aliens from Star Wars who (according to me!) bring the Golden Idol from a galaxy far, far away to a Indy’s world, are the exact same aliens who we all associate with, well, aliens.
Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
A ship arrives to Earth from deep space at some point in deep history, let’s say a nice clean 5,000 years ago (halfway between the first Peruvian settlements and the construction of Kuelap). After doing a few laps and carefully surveying the region, they land in a clearing near a settlement. The ship opens up, and out comes a small contingent of Bith, bearing gifts from another galaxy and looking to party. How did they get so far from home? Perhaps, as one of the most advanced and ancient species in the galaxy, it was no big deal. Given the insanely short time it takes to traverse enormous distances in hyperspace, with enough time and fuel, jumping between galaxies is no less possible than anything else in this theory. It could have been intentional or accidental, an adventure vacation, exploration or mission of conquest. Regardless, the Bith arrive from their home planet of Clak’dor VII, fill the local humans with awe and horror, and thus immediately enter the cultural substrate of human consciousness that exists to this day.
Golden Idol spotted on my bookshelf
Perhaps these visitors vini vidi vici the situation and decide that Earth is a nice little investment property in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps other Star Wars species followed. Perhaps they’ve been coming back for eons. All of which explains the persistence of the Grays aesthetic as the dominant alien type, as well as the UFOlogy narrative that multiple alien species are visiting and engaged in a… wait a minute… a galactic war?! Is it all really that well-connected?
I mean, think about it. Aliens from another galaxy at war with each other is quite literally the definition of Star Wars.
And now let’s take it a step further? And a step beyond even that. What if the humans of Earth are actually from the Star Wars universe itself? What if by some insane, fan-theory coincidence, we turned out to be the descendants of visitors from Coruscant or Naboo or Tatooine who fell in love with, or were stranded on, our garden planet? A planet that conveniently has all the terrain they’ve ever seen in the Galactic Empire, including lots and lots of coarse and rough and irritating sand that gets everywhere.
And if that’s true, then what if this:
What if a rogue, scruffy-looking, nerf-herding scoundrel of a smuggler, on his many adventures across the galaxy, had a lost child before he met that spitfire of a princess who later became a general and leader of rebellions. And what if that lost child had children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren? And what if one of them went on an adventure to a far-off garden planet in another galaxy and settled there, and had their own children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren?
And after thousands of years, perhaps that lineage with long-lost origins from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, produces a child. A child who grows up to be an archaeologist whose name is, of course, Indiana Jones.
Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?
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