The Big Picture

• Sallah, played by John Rhys-Davies, is a standout sidekick in the Indiana Jones franchise.
• Rhys-Davies believes that Sallah, as a loving father and husband who has settled down, would be a stalwart protector of history and culture in his later years.
• While Rhys-Davies believes that the larger Indiana Jones franchise will continue in video games, he doesn't discount the possibility of Indy returning to the big screen if there's still money to be made.

The legendary archaeologist Indiana Jones has been lucky to share the screen with some incredible sidekicks throughout his five feature-length adventures. One standout of the crowd, however, has to be John Rhys-Davies's Egyptian excavator Sallah, a long-enduring friend of Harrison Ford's explorer throughout the franchise. Sallah recently returned to help Indy one last time in 2023's Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, though his presence is rather limited thanks to his responsibilities as a family man. When imagining where the "best digger in Egypt's" journey would end in this universe, however, Rhys-Davies believes it involves defending history.

During a panel at MegaCon hosted by Collider's Arezou Amin, the star was asked about which of his iconic characters he prefers playing between Gimli — the beloved, axe-wielding dwarven warrior from Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy — and Sallah. Both cast long shadows in pop culture, but Rhys-Davies has a particular affinity for Sallah for how he stands out in both the films and Western media as a whole. "Sallah is wonderful," he told the audience. "He was very different. You do realize that Sallah is probably the only Arab hero in contemporary Western culture that we recognize. I mean, that’s a major failure of two cultures there. I like him."

Sallah ends the Indiana Jones film franchise in New York City as a loving father and husband who has settled down after his years of adventure. Throughout the films, however, he's constantly shown a willingness to accompany Dr. Jones on dangerous journeys that leave the fate of the world in the balance. Given his history of keeping powerful historical artifacts out of the wrong hands, Rhys-Davies believes Sallah would be a stalwart protector of history and culture in his later years. He went as far as referencing the story of a real-life Syrian museum keeper in Palmyra, Khaled al-As'ad, who was tragically killed in 2015 while defending its treasures from the terrorist group ISIS:

"I’ll tell you how I think Sallah ends up. I think he ends up like that wonderful fellow Waleed [Khaled] al-As’ad, who is the keeper of the museum in Palmyra. And when ISIS came or I think it was ISIS, he refused, he’d hidden all the treasures and he refused to give them out. And they said, if you don’t, we will kill you and he refused. And I think he was 82 years old and he was forced to kneel and they beheaded him. That’s a man protecting his culture. That’s a man protecting history. And I believe that’s the sort of man that Salah might have become."

What's Next for 'Indiana Jones' After 'The Dial of Destiny'?

For now, it seems Sallah's story, and Rhys-Davies's time in the Indiana Jones franchise is at its end. In a sense, 2023 was a throwback year for the Emmy nominee as he also reprised his role as Gimli for the video game Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria. The larger Indy franchise, however, will likely never truly ride off into the sunset. A new first-person game, titled Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, is due out later this year from Fallout and Elder Scrolls developers Bethesda alongside Wolfenstein reboot head Machine Games that will put players in the shoes of the legendary adventurer. Rhys-Davies doesn't necessarily believe Indy is done on the big screen either. "In the world of Hollywood, if there's still money to be made — believe me — there's no 'final' finals," he told Express.co.uk ahead of Dial of Destiny's release. Considering the movie struggled for Disney on its massive budget, though, it may be a while before someone attempts a feature-length return to this world.

Stay tuned here at Collider for more of our coverage from MegaCon. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is available to stream now on Disney+.

Watch on Disney+