During a recent interview with Variety, Phoebe Waller-Bridge sat down to talk about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and during the conversation, a spinoff film following her character Helena Shaw was brought up. She explained that sometime in the future it could happen, saying:
“There’s no replacing Indiana Jones in any way. But I feel like the character herself—she did feel fresh on the page, and there is a sense of, is there room in the world for someone like this? So I do think there’s room for a slightly clumsier, bruised, limping female action star, maybe, in the future.”
Helena Shaw is the God-daughter of Indiana Jones and when previously talking about the character Waller-Bridge said:
“I think they really achieved something extraordinary: she fits into the canon, and she feels like there is certainly an energy that she shares with all the characters that have come before, especially with the female parts, but she is unique, and she has a fresh voice. She was somebody who was mysterious from the off. I think [Indy’s] often been the mystery to those characters before, especially his female counterparts, and I think there’s something really unusual in how they flip that here.”
I liked the character in the film and she brought a fun aspect to the story, but if I was going to be interested in any Indiana Jones spinoff project, it would be one that follows the adventures of Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round. That’s the only one that makes sense to me. But, who knows what will happen?
One thing we do know is that director James Mangold is not interested in making a spinoff film for Helena Shaw. He said: “I’m not interested. I refuse. I just can’t do it. The amount of lore and Easter eggs and fan service starts to become antithetical to any of this stuff at a certain point. It isn’t storytelling anymore. It’s large-scale advertising.”
Now, just because he won’t do it, doesn’t mean that Lucasfilm and Disney won’t bring someone else in that would. I just think the Indiana Jones franchise should end with Dial of Destiny. But, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy previously talked about the franchise continuing, saying it’s “entirely possible” but “we’re not having any of those conversations right now. We’re just focused on finishing this with Harrison.”
