Luke Skywalker: The Unconventional Hero’s Journey
“That’s not Luke Skywalker!”
With the release of the eighth Star Wars episode, writer/director Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, some viewers have voiced disappointment with the arc given to the iconic character Luke Skywalker. Some felt he did things that were unfitting and out of character, and disappointment is typically the first emotion someone feels when something doesn’t go or turn out the way they thought or wanted it to.
Before the prequels were released, every Star Wars fan was excited to see the Jedi in their prime; it was time to see the wise, powerful order in action before “the dark times” as Obi-Wan Kenobi puts it in A New Hope. But that isn’t the story. The story is that the Jedi were to meet a terrible fate — after all, how could an order of powerful Jedi be completely taken out of the equation? The simple answer: they were flawed. This probably wasn’t what some wanted, but as the storyteller, it’s how George Lucas was able to make their downfall plausible.
Flaws and imperfections are crucial to character development — a necessity of telling a story. It’s what pulls us in. How will they get out of this situation? What must this character overcome within themselves? By making the Jedi strict, robotic, egotistical and “by the book,” Darth Sidious, or Emperor Palpatine, was able to plant the seeds for their downfall and his rise to power. Perhaps that’s not what some wanted to see, but when one considers where the Jedi were at in the original trilogy, it raises questions. The last remaining Jedi were hiding, and their entire order had been reduced to one thing: myth.
The Jedi chose inductees by their Midichlorian counts, ignored their pupils’ emotional dilemmas, and for some reason weren’t able to, despite essentially being the galactic police, free slaves. They prevented Anakin Skywalker from regularly visiting his mother, which arguably led to her death, and his mentors ignored him when he came to them about troubling visions such as his wife dying in childbirth.
I felt it necessary to touch on this before going into Luke Skywalker’s story in The Last Jedi and the story/character decisions made by Johnson. When Disney acquired Lucasfilm and announced a sequel trilogy, one can imagine that the biggest thing on everyone’s mind was Luke Skywalker. J.J. Abrams initially turned down duties on Episode VII and it was Kathleen Kennedy (producer) that posed a question that got him on board: “Who is Luke Skywalker?”
“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
In The Empire Strikes Back, on the murky swamp planet of Dagobah where former Jedi master Yoda has gone into hiding following the fall of the Jedi, Luke ventures into a mysterious cave after seemingly being beckoned by something from deep within. Before the venture, Yoda insists that he will not need a weapon. In the cavern depths he encounters a vision of Darth Vader and rather than realizing this to be a vision (how and why would Vader be there, he fails to ask himself), Luke is the first to draw said weapon. Luke beheads the apparition, and as the grounded helmet turns up to face us, the mask evaporates, revealing Vader’s face to be his own.
Luke, despite being our hero, who we’re meant to cheer for and even relate to on some level, is the first to attack.
In A New Hope, Luke’s aunt Beru tells his uncle Owen that he has “too much of his father in him.” He fosters many of Anakin’s traits, the good and the bad. On Cloud City, as Luke confronts the actual Darth Vader, Luke is the first to strike. In the Emperor’s chamber in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine motivates Luke on to strike him down. Luke resists for a while, but ultimately gives in, pulling his lightsaber to him and proving the dark lord right to some degree.
Once again, Luke attacks, even at the request of the antagonist.
Luke Skywalker was never this flawless hero, and it has always been clear to me that a large part of his character, his kneejerk decisions and worry of future events that haven’t happened yet are also defining traits of his father, Anakin Skywalker, and why he fell to the dark side.
After the events of Return of the Jedi, I always felt there was more that needed to be said about the character — a reason I was hopeful the sequel trilogy would explore.
“Luke Skywalker has vanished.”
The opening crawl of The Force Awakens, which follows Return of the Jedi, begins with this haunting but tantalizing bit. What happened to Luke Skywalker? What we do know is that he is being hunted vehemently by Kylo Ren, a dark figure strong in the Force that leads the First Order, a military made up of remnants of Palpatine’s former Empire. On the junk planet Jakku, ace pilot of the Resistance, Poe Dameron, is given a fragment of a map believed to lead to Luke’s location and installs it into his personal astromech droid BB-8 to keep safe — and as far away from Ren as possible.
The BB unit encounters Rey, a scavenger that grew up fending for herself, raiding old, fallen ships from the previous war. Much like Luke’s encounter with R2-D2 and C-3PO, this propels Rey into the conflict where she learns of the power residing within her, meets a defected First Order Stormtrooper, and discovers the droid possesses the location of Luke Skywalker.
“Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth…”
At the end of the film R2-D2 presents the missing fragment that, combined with BB-8’s, may lead to the location of Luke Skywalker. Rey may have heard stories about Luke Skywalker, the myth, but before the credits roll, she is on a remote island on the planet Ahch-To, extending a long-lost weapon that belongs to him.
The Last Jedi picks up where we left Rey and Luke at the end of The Force Awakens. Luke, the hero of the Republic and savior of the galaxy, has been found. Now, nothing could possibly stand in their way. All he needs to do is take his lightsaber from Rey and meet Kylo Ren and the First Order head-on like any legendary hero would.
Luke takes the lightsaber and tosses it over his shoulder like trash.
As with the portrayal of the Jedi in the prequels, fans were whiplashed by this. This isn’t the hero many of us grew up with and could relate to. This is a broken man, alone, exiled — much like his past mentors Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. As fans of Luke Skywalker, this doesn’t sit right, and not at all what we waited to see. This isn’t the “new hope” we’ve come to expect from Luke.
In The Force Awakens, we learn Kylo Ren feels that his destiny is to carry on the legacy of Darth Vader, his grandfather, as under the mask he is Ben Solo — the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. However, it is a legacy that he couldn’t possibly fully understand as he doesn’t know the entire story of Vader, the Jedi that returned to the light side. While Rey sets out to follow in the footsteps of Luke Skywalker, Kylo Ren aims to follow in the footsteps of Darth Vader.
As the audience, we didn’t have the full picture, likewise, of Kylo Ren’s actions until The Last Jedi, where we learn a shocking truth. Luke was training Ben, along with a group of other Jedi hopefuls, when an action was taken that arguably creates Kylo Ren. Sensing darkness within Ben, Luke, our hero, filled with insecurity and fear, commits a brash, knee-jerk action as he draws a lightsaber on Ben. We have, in this moment, the same Luke that refused to leave his weapon behind before journeying into the cave which led to him attacking a mere vision. The same Luke that strikes at Palpatine out of anger.
“For many years, there was balance, and then I saw… Ben. My nephew with that mighty Skywalker blood. And in my hubris, I thought I could train him, I could pass on my strengths.”
Feeling betrayed by both his mentor and parents, Ben brings down the foundation in an incredible display of power, burying Luke in the rubble and thus creating Kylo Ren. Yet, Luke was never going to strike Ben. The moment he ignited the lightsaber was the moment he regretted it, and felt, right then and there, that he wasn’t fit to be training Jedi. He’s still carrying some of those same flaws as the Jedi before him, and it led to the creation of our new villain.
“I know only one truth: it is time for the Jedi… to end.”
Later in The Last Jedi in what may perhaps be the most important, progressive scene in the entire saga to date, Luke heads toward an ancient Jedi library, torch in hand, with the intent on destroying it, and the Jedi order on a symbolic level. Yoda appears before him and intervenes, though, using the Force to manipulate a lightning storm, causing a bolt to strike down at the tree and destroying it before Luke can have a say in the matter.
Yoda is trying to tell Luke, and by extension, us, that it’s okay to let go, and as they watch it all burn down together, we are meant to consider that in the past lies flaws, mistakes, but also lessons. It’s about learning from and respecting the past, but more than that, embracing the future and change. We’re meant to think that this is the end of the Jedi, but it’s a new beginning, as Yoda knew Rey had taken select materials from the library that will help her begin to, at some point, rekindle the Jedi.
Luke declares to Kylo Ren during the climax: “I will not be the last Jedi.” This is Luke accepting his mistakes, learning from them, and seeing the potential within not only Rey, but the future of the galaxy, and possibly a better future for the Jedi. Now that the past has been let go, but in possession of materials that can help provide Rey “everything she needs,” as stated by Yoda, there is the lingering feeling that, for the Jedi, there is still hope.
“We are the spark that’ll light the fire that will bring the First Order down.”
The film ends with a group of children being forced to work Fathier stables; large horse-like creatures captive for sport in the city of Canto Bight. Earlier in the story, they are encountered by Finn and Rose, the defected Stormtrooper, and a Resistance mechanic, and are given a Resistance insignia bearing its emblem. This excites them, but more than that it gives them hope; the promise of a brighter future, and something to fight for. Before the credits roll, we are left with a young boy using the Force to pull a broom to him so that he can finish sweeping the stables. We see that the boy is wearing the Resistance insignia ring as he looks up to the stars and slowly raises his broom, like a weapon. Luke’s final actions have lit a spark of hope across the galaxy.
The Last Jedi begins with Luke tossing his lightsaber aside and renouncing the ways of the Jedi and the Force, but by the end of the film we leave him at a place where he has evolved from myth, as what Rey only knew him as in The Force Awakens, to legend. While Luke made mistakes and went into hiding over them, our new hope believing there was no hope, he was able to learn from said mistakes and overcome his biggest hurdle, one bigger than Vader, one larger than the Empire — himself.
And in so doing, without going on the offensive, like a Jedi. That’s Luke Skywalker.
