In 2023, Khan reunited with Yash Raj Films in the action thriller Pathaan (2023), set in the YRF Spy Universe, in which he played an exiled field agent assigned to stop a terrorist attack in India.^[200] Critic Sukanya Verma took note of Khan’s “weathered intensity, grizzly charisma and trademark wit”, while Kaveree Bamzai termed it a “much-needed makeover” of an ageing Khan into an action star.^[201][202] Pathaan broke several box-office records, thus re-establishing Khan’s stardom.^[203][204] Khan took on another action film role in the same year in Atlee‘s Jawan, playing father and son doppelgängers.^[205] Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in wrote that “Khan’s screen image – expansive, suffused with love, heroic in an old-fashioned way without being aggressively macho, irreverent but also sincere – helps sell a conceit that might have crashed with any other actor”.^[206] Jawan broke the records set by Pathaan.^[207] Both films grossed over ₹10 billion (US$120 million) to rank, respectively, as Hindi cinema’s second and third biggest grossers worldwide,^[208] making Khan the first Indian actor to deliver two films that earned over ₹10 billion.^[209]

In his final release of 2023, Khan starred in Rajkumar Hirani‘s Dunki, a social drama about an illegal immigration technique named donkey flight.^[210][211] Uday Bhatia wrote that his role as a “romantic feminist soldier patriot friend” marked “a break from Khan the action star but offers no respite from the Khan the perfect screen idol”.^[212] Grossing over ₹4 billion (US$48 million), Dunki emerged as Khan’s third consecutive commercial success of the year, although it did not match up to the record grosses of Pathaan or Jawan.^[213][214]