*Note: For the purposes of this article and my sanity, we are going to pretend that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull does not exist. There is a time and place to acknowledge and discuss that film’s existence, but it’s not here. If we were to consider it here, it would just lead to too many asides and parentheticals that would detract from the article’s main points.

You know Indiana Jones. We all do. And we all love the movies and the characters. But if there is one character that seems to be almost universally hated, it has to be Willie Scott from Temple of Doom. Now, I say almost because I have heard a handful of people online express positive feelings about Willie. However, I can’t think of one time out of the countless that I have discussed Indiana Jones with someone where they haven’t at least mentioned how they don’t like Willie. The arguments seem to range from “She’s annoying” to “She makes the whole movie terrible.” To me, some of these viewpoints are understandable and some are extreme; but either way, I have to say that I’ve always thought Willie was a wonderful character, every bit as good as Marion or Elsa. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about 1) why so many people seem to hate Willie and 2) why I don’t. And I’ve come up with a theory about Indy’s love interests and their relationships to Indy himself. So here we go.

In my opinion, each of Indy’s romantic partners (Marion, Willie, and Elsa) reflect – and therefore highlight – a certain side of Indy’s own personality. When I think of Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr., I break down his character like this:

The three main components of Indiana Jones are his Bravery/Tenacity, his Recklessness/Selfishness, and his Intelligence/Ruthlessness. Now, you could argue that these should be laid out as six main components, but triangles are easier than hexagons so let’s just stick with three (also, three movies, three women, you get the idea.)

Now let’s break down Marion, Willie, and Elsa in a similar way:

See, each of these characters serves the same basic purpose: to highlight a facet of Indy’s personality by embodying a particular set of personality traits. Viewing the characters this way, it’s clear that Willie does exactly the same thing as Marion or Elsa; it completely levels the playing field for the three characters and kind of negates the idea that any of them falls short of the others.

So there’s my justification as to why Willie is a good character. Conversely, however, it also offers an answer to my question, “Why do so many fans hate Willie?” I think it’s because she represents a side of Indy that most fans either overlook or just don’t want to admit.

Now, we can all agree that Indy is brave and intelligent, and I think most of us would agree that he can be ruthless and reckless too. But how many fans would readily allow that Indiana Jones is selfish? I don’t know, maybe just as many; but again, in my personal experience, I’ve never heard anyone bring this up.

Willie is clearly selfish. She’s constantly complaining about her nails breaking or her expensive clothes getting ruined, even as Indy and Short Round are fighting for their lives against countless mooks. She’s so self-absorbed that she can’t even entertain the possibility that any man, even the world-famous Dr. Jones, would not be attracted to her. Then again, Indy himself can’t imagine that Willie wouldn’t have the hots for him. Temple of Doom’s funniest scene occurs when Indy and Willie fail to put aside their pride and their conceits and just admit they like each other; they each expect the other to give in.

And let’s talk about putting other people’s lives in danger for a moment. Probably the most obvious example of Willie doing this is immediately after she saves Indy and Short Round from a certain death, only to put all three of them right back in the same doomed situation because she’s so concerned about having bugs on her. But how many times does Indy put others in mortal danger to serve his own ends? So many times. Even just considering Temple of Doom; in Club Obi-Wan, he holds Willie hostage at fork-point to try to save his own life. Yeah, he rescued Short Round from being a street orphan, but then he uses him as his get away driver. A seven-year-old being shot at by vicious gangsters, whipped by cult members, and forced to dangle precariously from a cliff above crocodile-infested waters – all because Indy needed to make a quick get away. And let’s not forget Indy’s motivation that sets off the events of the movie in the first place: fortune and glory. Now, he does have his altruistic moments of course, but they are the exceptions to the rule.

What separates Willie and Indy is the fact that while Willie isn’t even supposed to be likable, Indiana Jones is immensely likable. His affability is arguably the biggest draw of the series. But he’s only likable because he has the other aforementioned traits to round him out and counter his shortcomings; Willie does not.

And this brings me to another, altogether different point. Although this theory justifies supporting Willie Scott as a character and shows how Indy’s romantic partners elevate his own character to an interesting complexity, it also points out what is in my opinion the biggest flaw of the series (other than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but, again, we’re not going to talk about that): the female leads tend to be fairly one-dimensional. They don’t really exist outside of their individual relationships to Indy. I think Elsa is the most complex of them, and even she is totally defined by her interactions with Indy. Of course, this is a well-documented problem that befalls all too many mainstream movies, especially big, fun action/adventure movies. I guess there isn’t really anything to be done about it at this point; the most recent Indiana Jones movie is twenty-five years old. But it can and should be rectified in the future. Let’s hope that if they do make an Indy V (or better yet, a Short Round movie) they have a female lead that both elevates the hero and truly stands on her own as an interesting and complex character – and is in turn elevated by the hero.

TL;DR

Willie is unlikable because she represents a part of Indy that is unlikable – but that’s exactly why she’s a good character. And although the series’ female leads do highlight what a great character Indy is, they unfortunately lack their own depth.