There has been a lot of talk since The Last Jedi was released in 2017 about the state of Luke Skywalker. Who he was, who he is, and what we “all” expected from Luke Skywalker after a 30+ year time gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. I think most of us were hoping to have some great moments with Luke, Leia and Han all together for a scene or two. In the original trilogy, they weren’t together very long at all, and spent about 22.5 minutes together out of the total 377 minutes. But it’s been a very long time, and we wanted to see them together again, one last time. But that was not to be.
The New Generation and The Passing of the Torch
To tell a story of the next generation, they had also made a decision to have each part of the trilogy focus on what would be the final adventure for each of these fan-favorite cast members. The first film featuring Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, which made sense as Harrison Ford famously cares about Star Wars about as much as many people care about their own jobs. Some people said Han’s death was telegraphed by the large paycheck he received for returning to Star Wars. I disagree with that sentiment, because if he had survived and been a key player throughout the sequel trilogy, whatever he got paid would have been worth it, even if he got paid around 40 million per episode. The second film would be Luke Skywalker’s final adventure. And the third film would feature Leia’s final adventure. Doing this gave each of them a film in which they were in the spotlight. It was kind of a curtain call for each of them, a victory lap. And when you think about doing that, what does that mean for the characters appearing in the movies? It means that each film will feature as much of the other two characters as necessary to not overshadow the other character’s victory lap. Having Han Solo champion the first film, and then dies likely means that Luke shouldn’t be there to rescue him, and he and Leia shouldn’t necessarily be together at the time either, because Leia is as powerful as Luke is with the Force, and they wanted to position her character to be a great leader and one of the primary heroes of the third act. So they separate the three of them in ways that are realistic to their characters. What would cause Han to return to smuggling? Why did Luke disappear? So they answered these questions and more across three films.
Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, A Symbol of Hope
I’ve heard a lot of people say many things about Luke in The Last Jedi that I don’t necessarily agree with. I think Luke was just fine… and the fact that the movie was titled The Last Jedi in reference to him, meant the movie may as well have been titled “Star Wars: Luke Skywalker.” This movie was all about Luke Skywalker, and how he went from someone 30 years older with good and bad experiences that we don’t know much about since Return of the Jedi, a bit of a curmudgeon… to returning to the Luke Skywalker we know and love when he walks into the base at the end of the movie and winks at 3PO and talks with Leia, in what’s one of my favorite scenes in the saga.
Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, embraces the fact that he IS a symbol of hope for the universe, he apologizes to his nephew, and he pulls the ultimate Jedi move and doesn’t negotiate aggressively. The way of the Sith is to murder your enemies at will… but the Jedi way is not. I know some people wanted Luke to have his “Vader-moment” like we saw in the hallway scene in Rogue One. But that was a Sith Lord doing something evil. While it would have been awesome to see Luke single-handedly destroy all of the First Order’s walkers… it would have been a far more dark side to do so. And what he did was buy time for the remaining members of the Resistance to escape to the Falcon, where he knew Rey would rescue them. It turned out to be a sacrificial act, of which there is no greater love than that. And that’s the Luke I know from the Original Trilogy. Selfless, thinking only of others and not himself, and putting his own life on the line to save the lives of many.
Now… we also got to finally see Luke’s Rogue One like “Vader-moment” in the series The Mandalorian. When Jedi Master Luke Skywalker takes down a horde of droids, we finally got to see the Luke Skywalker we’ve pretty much wanted to see since Return of the Jedi when Luke became a Jedi after he’d confronted Vader. And it didn’t result in the ending of lives. This contracts perfectly with the Vader scene in Rogue One where the Sithlord is actively killing rebels.
Luke Skywalker is a symbol of hope. And symbols of hope should be heroic. Remember all of the controversy around Man of Steel where Superman does the only thing he can do and kills Zod? But Superman doesn’t kill, right? I know that Superman and Luke Skywalker aren’t the same, but they’re both symbols of hope.
After the journey Luke goes through, we get some of the best dialog he has in the entire saga.
Kylo Ren:The Resistance is dead, the war is over, and when I kill you, I will have killed the last Jedi!
Luke Skywalker:Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong. The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi.
And Luke’s sacrifice is also a direct reflection of the sacrifice that he witnessed Obi-Wan Kenobi make in A New Hope.
Grieving for Fictional Characters
I also think there’s a psychological aspect to the sequel trilogy that most people don’t discuss. When a character in a movie or a TV show dies, especially one you’ve followed for some time, and even in shorter stories, we go through the same grieving process as we do when a family member or friend passes away. Inside of us, cognitively, we don’t experience those two things as different events. They are the same. So when we have Luke, Leia, and Han, characters that have been with us since 1977, each passes away… and Carrie Fisher in reality… the grieving process is going to be exactly the same.
I think that’s why there was such an emotional reaction to each of the movies. (How well the movies played out, that’s up to the individual to decide. I loved them all, but I know that there are people that disagree, and that’s okay and not the important part of this.) The point really is… sometimes people don’t allow themselves to grieve properly… in particular when it comes to a fictional character or a celebrity that you may only know from watching them on your own TV at home.
All of this is why a good book, tv show, or movie can all make you cry… and the loss of a character can be devastating.
It can also lead to crazy responses, like when R.A. Salvatore’s book Vector Prime killed off Chewbacca, and he got so many death threats he didn’t write another Star Wars novel until the screen adaptation of Attack of the Clones, and nothing since. Heck, I have a J.J. Abrams website that got death threats after “The Force Awakens” because of Han Solo. None of that is okay. It is never okay to threaten someone’s life for any reason.
What is grief if not love persevering?
I think that this is bound to be difficult for people to wrap their heads around, and it may not apply to everyone, but I do think this has impacted people more than they probably think. It’s okay to be angry, to be sad, etc.
Happy Star Wars Day!
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