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At the end of The Last Crusade, the Austrian woman attempted to take the Holy Grail beyond the great seal at the entrance of the temple.

In doing so, she caused the temple to quake and the Grail fell into a chasm that was created.

One of the last scenes in the temple shows the last Templar Knight waving bye to Indiana as the escaped.

Was the grail completely lost to the world now? Or did the Knight collect it and reset the temple for the next person to face the tests and discover the grail?

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  • 1
    God moves in mysterious ways. Once you've accepted that this the Holy Grail you can't really say, can you?
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Jan 10, 2012 at 4:40
  • 26
    The Holy Grail would not be lost for good, since it could easily be retrieved by an unladen swallow.
    – Tango
    Commented Jan 10, 2012 at 4:47
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    @Tango - African or European?
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Commented Jan 10, 2012 at 16:56
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    @DVK: If they're looking for the grail, and the grail isn't in Europe, they'd have to be African, of course!
    – Tango
    Commented Jan 10, 2012 at 17:01
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    It was lost for ill really. Think of the lives that could have been saved with that thing. It wasn't good at all that it was lost ;)
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Aug 31, 2016 at 22:09

3 Answers 3

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17

Yes

These people at this reference, interpret the final grail scene the same way I do:

The Grail is lost forever. (bold mine)

Elsa grabs it and runs off, but when she crosses a forbidden area, the temple collapses, and Elsa and the Grail are lost forever.

The Wikia site for Indiania Jones says this about the Holy Grail(bold mine):

Indiana nearly tumbled into the abyss himself, but was caught by his father. Indiana, like Elsa, tried to reach the cup, but was persuaded by Henry to let it go.

As a result, the Grail was ultimately lost following the events of the adventure, but the experience gave both Indiana and his father the chance to rekindle their rocky relationship.

Also that page mentions:

Years later, the elder Jones remarked on the elusive, indefinite nature of the Grail, commenting that the cup discovered by the father-son team was simply "a Grail. But many of the oldest Grail texts, written by the most ancient seers, refer to the Grail as an elixir, as a bread, a powder, gold, or a stone."

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  • 4
    "As a result, the Grail was ultimately lost following the events of the adventure, but the experience gave both Indiana and his father the chance to rekindle their rocky relationship" - So two people may be friendlier for a few decades before dying. Not much of a consolation to the rest of the world for millennia to com for the loss of the Holy Grail.
    – M. A. Golding
    Commented Mar 16, 2018 at 1:52
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    I wonder is it possible to just dig in that place and try to recover The Grail?
    – Yaroslav Kornachevskyi
    Commented Sep 13, 2021 at 13:28
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    @YaroslavKornachevskyi Of course, once you have the technology and the funding to dig that deep and sift through that amount of material (and know that it's there in the first place).
    – TylerH
    Commented Sep 13, 2021 at 13:48
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    @TylerH I think the technology is already available, and people with money are ready to start the digging, simple like that.
    – Yaroslav Kornachevskyi
    Commented Sep 13, 2021 at 13:57
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    Just image all those big holes in the earth where iron ore is mined. And in this case we have the same hole, but with more deliberate devices, and infinite life is the prize. I bet USA will invade the whole region in the next hours )
    – Yaroslav Kornachevskyi
    Commented Sep 13, 2021 at 15:55
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This part of the story was intended to be left as a mystery by the writer, and so the public would have to imagine (individually) what happened to the Grail.

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2

Another point in favor of 'yes': The Grail is seen (and noted in the script) to be a clay cup with gold foil lining the bowl.

When it fell into the chasm, it undoubtedly shattered into a whole lot of shards and dust, so it isn't even a cup anymore.

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  • 14
    But explicitly a magic cup, so really all bets are off...
    – tardigrade
    Commented Aug 31, 2016 at 20:06

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