Much more than just Indiana Jones and Han Solo, Harrison Ford has enjoyed a wide and varied career since he broke out in the ‘70s. But never on TV, and to now, he was one of the few Hollywood heavyweights untouched by Marvel’s infinity gauntlet — but that's all changing in the next couple of years. The 80-year-old cultural icon is taking the reins on General “Thunderbolt” Ross in the MCU, replacing William Hurt in the wake of his death this year, and his first ever major TV role in Brett Goldstein and Jason Segel's Shrinking, a comedy where he'll play… a blunt, blue-collar shrink. Seems appropriate. This on top of a new role in Yellowstone spin-off 1923 next to Helen Mirren.
We know that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, his fifth crack at the bullwhip, will be his final outing as the history professor-come-globetrotting adventurer. “This is it! I will not fall down for you again,” he said at Disney's D23 Expo earlier this year, becoming quite visibly emotional: “This one kicks ass.” As the seventh highest-grossing actor of all time, Ford could quite happily take Indy 5 as his well-deserved victory lap and fly off into the sunset — so what's inspired this late-career shift?
Well, for one, that Marvel retirement fund must be difficult to turn your nose up at. But when it comes to TV, it's a marker of the format's newfound prestige that long-time leading men like Ford are migrating to network in their later years. (Notably, Sly Stallone made the jump just this year with Paramount's Tulsa King, and Al Pacino has chased down ex-Nazis in Hunters since 2020.)
Ford said as much in a recent interview on the Yellowstoners podcast. “To me, the quality of work that they've been doing there is evident,” Ford said of the series — immensely popular Stateside, though it hasn't quite caught on with the same fervour this side of the Atlantic. “So, my ambition to be part of that doesn't seem to be, to me, too much of a stretch. We assume there's this big difference between television and films. It's really just the destination for it [that's different]. There are great opportunities to tell complicated and ambitious stories on television, but it's just where you show it.”
Asked why he'd taken the leap into the MCU, a move you could see as below his actorly standing, he had a simple answer to offer. “Hey, look, I've done a lot of things,” he said. “I now want to do some of the things I haven't done.” That would include motion capture, you'd think — as the podcast host notes, General Ross eventually becomes the Red Hulk, which is exactly what it sounds like. That would require motion capture. Ford kept stuhm, but hey — maybe it isn't just about the money. Maaaaybe.
