John Wayne's 10/10 Masterpiece Still Has The Greatest Final Shot In Western History

Published Aug 24, 2026, 9:00 PM EDT Shawn S. Lealos is an entertainment writer who is a voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has written for Screen Rant, CBR, ComicBook, The Direct, The Sportster, Chud, 411mania, Renegade Cinema, Yahoo Movies, and many more. Shawn has a bachelor's degree in professional writing and a minor in film studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also has won numerous awards, including several Columbia Gold Circle Awards and an SPJ honor. He also wrote Dollar Deal: The Story of the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers, the first official book about the Dollar Baby film program. Shawn is also currently writing his first fiction novel under a pen name, based in the fantasy genre. To learn more, visit his website at shawnlealos.net. The best John Wayne Western movie also contains one of the best closing shots of any movie in the genre. Wayne was a mainstay in Westerns for decades, easily the most bankable and successful star in the genre. This is because he spent most of his career carefully cultivating his image and ensuring that he only took roles in movies that had him show up as a hero. Wayne almost never appeared as a villain in any of his movies. That makes it interesting to note that the movie considered Wayne's masterpiece is a film where he plays a bad man, albeit one doing good things. Unlike his earlier Westerns, Wayne plays a racist, vengeful man in The Searchers. In this movie, he plays Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran who holds a distinct hatred for Native Americans, so much so that he threatens to kill his own niece rather than allow her to live among the Native American tribes. In the end, though, Edwards does the right thing, but it still doesn't excuse his attitude and actions leading to this moment. Wayne always said he loved the movie, and he admitted it so much that he named one of his sons Ethan, after his character in the movie. What connects, though, is the final scene of this John Ford classic, which shows where Edwards ends up when the story concludes. What The Final Shot Of The Searchers Means & Why It's So Perfect The Searchers has Wayne playing Ethan Edwards, a Civil War veteran who returns home to his family. At this time, they are tricked by a local Comanche tribe into drawing the men away from their families. When they race back home, they find their homestead in flames, several of their family members dead, and their nieces, Debbie and Lucy, gone. Edwards heads out to find the tribe and rescue his nieces. However, when he learns that young Debbie has become integrated with the tribe, he says he will find the tribe and kill her to protect her from being part of that tribe. By the end, he rescues her against her will and then returns her to her home. The final scene then shows where Ethan stands with not only his family but also society as a whole. As Debbie reunites with her family and Ethan's surviving family members enter the Jorgensen home, John Ford leaves the camera inside and shows Ethan walking away from the home. The door to the house then slowly closes. The family is inside, and Ethan is alone outside, knowing he will never fit in with them or with society after everything he has done in his life. This is a perfect scene that represents the tragic isolation of Ethan Edwards, a violent man who lives in a violent world and is in no way fit to live in a civilized world. The doorway is the symbolic line between the wild Old West and the comforts of family life, and Ethan is forever trapped on the wrong side of that door. The Searchers' Ending Cements Its Status As A Western Masterpiece This final shot tells in one moment what The Searchers is about, as well as what stories Western movies from this point on tried to tell. There were no longer men in white hats and men in black hats, where one side was always purely good. This was now a land where it was violent, racist, and often completely savage. The old Westerns painted the Native Americans as "savages," but this movie showed the white man was just as savage. While Wayne still stuck to his belief that Westerns should be stories about the purity of the Old West, this movie proved that he and John Ford knew the genre was capable of so much more. Movies like The Searchers and True Grit showed broken heroes, men who did what was needed and who knew they were not always right. That is why The Searchers is a masterpiece, and this one scene proves that statement. Release Date May 26, 1956 Runtime 119 minutes Director John Ford Cast Jeffrey Hunter Martin Pawley Writers Frank S. Nugent Producers C.V. Whitney