Many fans of the show have noticed that Professor Roy Hinkley (Russell Johnson) was the only reason anyone could survive on “Gilligan’s Island.” Not only was he able to keep a cool head in extreme situations, but he was also the only one with any kind of engineering knowhow. He was able to repair radios, examine mysterious chemicals that washed up on shore, and it was likely he who constructed the island’s aqueduct system. While Mr. and Mrs. Howell (Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer) were lying around drinking mai tais and Gilligan (Bob Denver) was bumbling through life, the Professor was getting s*** done on “Gilligan’s Island.” The fact that he never became angry on confrontational speaks largely to the character’s maturity and command largesse.
The original “Gilligan’s Island” series didn’t have proper closure, but some late-stage TV movie follow-ups did explore what happened to the castaways later in life. In the 1978 film “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island,” the castaways did manage — at long last — to return to the mainland. They found, however, that they were all unhappy. The Professor had become a celebrity, a status he never asked for; he would have preferred to return to a lab to do research. By the end of “Rescue,” the castaways were, by bleak happenstance, deposited on the same island as before, equally stranded.
In the next movie, though, the rescue was finally permanent. In 1979’s “The Castaways on Gilligan’s Island,” the army finally managed to map the location of the island and rescue the castaways once and for all. In a very “Myth of Sisyphus” twist, however, the castaways all found they liked living on a tropical island and decided to move back intentionally, opening a beach resort. Fittingly, the resort was called “The Castaways.” They made their rock their thing.
In a 1997 interview with the Toronto Star, Johnson revealed that the end of “The Castaways” was fitting for his real life, in which he, too, retired to an island.