Did you spot it? It’s there in the image above. Can you see it?
This week’s Andor ends with a scene in the showroom of Stellan Skarsgard’s Luthen Rael. Rael is an antiques dealer, or at least that’s his cover. In truth, Rael is secretly one of the early members of the Rebel Alliance. And he has recruited Cassian Andor to assist in an all-important heist on the planet of Aldhani.
Episode 5, “The Axe Forgets,” chronicles the final preparations for the mission. Just before the closing credits, we see Rael back in his shop, fretting over the outcome. He keeps checking his radio to see if there’s any word from the Rebels, but the mission hasn’t even taken place yet. When the scene cuts to close-up, look over Skarsgard’s left shoulder, in the top right of the frame. There, you’ll see the Sankara Stones from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
If you haven’t seen the movie, the Stones are Temple of Doom’s MacGuffin. Indy winds up at a village in India that has fallen into chaos after their sacred stone (and their children) were stolen by a cult of Kali worshipers. Indy and his allies venture to the nearby Pankot Palace to retrieve the stone, along with assorted fortune and glory.
In close-ups, the key Temple of Doom Stone prop had three horizontal lines across it just like the ones on the two stones on Rael’s shelf. If those aren’t meant to be the Sankara Stones (or at least an homage to them) it is a wild coincidence.
Of course Lucasfilm owns both Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies, and the two franchises have referenced one another in the past — in fact in Temple of Doom itself, Indy visits a Shanghai nightclub named Club Obi Wan. So this wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened.
New episodes of Andor premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+.
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