Counterfactuals, Dial of Destiny edition

Methods
Movies
Author

Eric Rauchway

Published

July 23, 2023

Spoilers for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny herein.

A still from Raiders of the Lost Ark, not in fact Dial of Destiny.

Toward the end of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Indy discovers carvings on the tomb of Archimedes that appear to show an airplane with propellers, thus indicating that the time-travel plan has, or will, succeed to a degree. Voller going into the past won’t change the past; it’s already factored into the present. There is no counterfactual, no alternative timeline available.

What does this tell us, retroactively, about the in-universe implications of the above image from Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which we see, in the Well of Souls, carvings of C-3PO and R2-D2?

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