The Sci-Fi Star Who Guest-Starred In Gunsmoke's Final Episode

It doesn't sound too surprising when a show with a 20-year lifespan decides to go off the air, but it came as a real shock when the cast and crew "Gunsmoke" learned about the show's sudden cancellation. Without a proper heads up that their version of Dodge City was going dark, the long-running CBS western drama was without a proper ending for our main characters. That decision was made on account of the higher-ups cleaning house, playing the time-honored game of out with the old, in with the new. The "good ol' days" era of when "Gunsmoke" was on television was coming to a close, leaving the show in an awkward position.

The best thing you can hope for in a series finale is something memorable to leave longtime viewers with, but the season 20 closer isn't exactly the best note for "Gunsmoke" to go out on. "The Sharecroppers," which aired over 50 years ago on March 31, 1975, is a Festus-centric episode that has the comedic relief deputy finding himself in a misunderstanding with two families, the Hogues and the Pughs, involving a mule and an accidental gunshot injury.

While the season 20 closer is a lesser run-of-the-mill episode, it does, however, feature a guest appearance that should look familiar to sci-fi fans. "Babylon 5" and "Tron" star Bruce Boxleitner (he's the titular Tron!) plays the temperamental Toby Hogue, who ends up giving Festus (Ken Curtis) a hard time at the farm while he's trying to work. "Gunsmoke" may have come to an end, but this wasn't going to be James Arness' last rodeo as Marshal Matt Dillon, nor would it be Boxleitner's final appearance in the franchise.

James Arness would proudly return to the role that made his career in "Return to Dodge," the first of five made-for-television movies that served as sequels to the hit CBS show, followed by "The Last Apache," "To The Last Man," "The Long Ride," and "One Man's Justice." There's a certain irony in not only starring in a series finale, but doing it twice, as Arness and Boxleitner can attest to.

Nearly two decades after "The Sharecroppers," Boxleitner heeds the last call aboard the "Gunsmoke" train as a man named Davis Healy, who finds himself partnering up with the retired Marshal after his stagecoach gets ambushed. Lucas (Kelly Morgan), the 15-year-old son of his slain mother Hannah (Hallie Foote), takes off in pursuit of Sean Devlin (Alan Scrafe), the bandit leader who orchestrated the hit. Dillon becomes involved not just because his daughter Beth (Amy Stoch) was aboard the stagecoach, but because he feels a responsibility to keep Lucas safe.

In spite of his injuries, Boxleitner's Healy joins Dillon in his journey to wrangle the revenge-driven teenager, in addition to taking down Devlin's crew. The two become close, but there comes a point where there's more to Healy than he's letting on and Dillon is starting to get suspicious. What follows is a complicated relationship between friends that puts both men in a tricky position about how to proceed next.

And Boxleitner having great chemistry with Arness isn't a coincidence, on account of the fact that they worked together on two other western projects prior to "One Man's Justice."

About a year after "The Sharecroppers" aired, Arness and Boxleitner played lead roles in the television series "How the West Was Won." Loosely based on the 1962 film of the same name, the cult western series follows Arness as Zeb Macahan, an ally to the Union Army who deserts his post at the start of the Civil War to take care of his sister and her four children in Virginia. Unlike Marshal Dillon, Zeb was a mountain man with no qualms about living by his own sets of rules to keep his family safe during their travels.

Boxleitner plays the eldest Macahan son, Luke (although he goes by Seth in the pilot), as a fugitive on the run after killing a man in self-defense. In an interview with the Archive of American Television, Arness told an amusing story about how he went to bat for the actor against then-programming director of ABC, Michael Eisner (who "stood up and said, 'OK, if that's the way you want it' and stomp[ed] out" when Arness put his foot down). The rest is history, as Arness and Boxleitner would work together across the show's television movie and subsequent three seasons.

Nearly a decade after that, however, the pair would reunite once again for a 1988 television remake of the Howard Hawks western classic "Red River." Boxleitner plays the Montgomery Clift role of Matthew Garth opposite Arness as Thomas Dunson, the character originated by John Wayne. The story of a cattle wrangler protégé slowly turning against the autocratic rancher that took him in is relatively the same, but despite some praise for the performances themselves, it isn't as highly regarded as the 1948 film.

Every episode of "Gunsmoke" is currently streaming on Pluto TV.