#((don’t mind me ooc just keeping this for safekeeping

[hamliet]

Hey Hamliet! I've seen people criticizing TLJ for making Luke out of character since they think he "wouldn't even have the slightest thought to kill his nephew and would never go into exile after that" - I'm not really a SW fan before watching sequel trilogy so I don't really know Luke's character from the original SW, but I think the "even heroes are not perfect" message from TLJ was really cool. What do you think? Is OOC for Luke to do that? (It's totally ok if you don't want to answer this!)

Hey! No worries; I love Star Wars and also loved that message from TLJ. I also don’t think that was out of character for Luke at all.

See, throughout the Original Trilogy, Luke did repeatedly do... stupid things when it came to protecting his friends. He had his own moment just like Rey did here, in which he ignored Yoda and Obi-Wan’s warnings and ran back to save Leia and Han in the Empire Strikes Back, only to find that he could not save them. Leia escaped with Lando’s help, but Han was frozen in carbonite, and Luke fought with Darth Vader, learned his was his dad, and lost his hand. He almost died and would have if Leia hadn’t felt through the Force that he needed to be saved.

In other words, Luke can be impulsive when he thinks things he loves are at risk.

And in Return of the Jedi, Vader uses Leia to provoke Luke. He taunts him, saying he will go after his sister next, and Luke loses. His. Shit. He violently attacks Vader, which is exactly what Vader wanted to provoke him into doing, telling Luke to embrace the Dark Side. And like, Luke was doing it. He was attacking the Father he went to confront to save, because he threatened Leia. He forgot about saving him in that moment, because he was scared and angry.

So, yeah. Luke has a history of doing this exact kind of thing. And just like in ROTJ, in TLJ we see that Luke thought about killing his nephew to protect Leia and Han from being hurt by their son going over to the Dark Side. (Keep in mind Vader also tortured Leia quite gruesomely and killed everyone she knew, and Leia never got to reconcile with him, unlike Luke.)

But Luke stopped himself. He knew what he was about to do was wrong. He didn’t have to be injured or reminded of what he was about to do by Vader to stop himself like in the Original Trilogy; he had learned enough to stop himself just because he knew it was wrong. And yet, you can’t take back everything you’ve set in motion, and Ben woke up, realized his uncle was about to kill him (he probably has no reason to believe Luke had changed his mind; the audience does because we know that’s within Luke’s character) and fled.

As for the exile thing... self-pity and whining was kind of both Anakin’s and Luke’s thing? It really doesn’t shock me that the boy who cares about protecting his sister more than anything in the world would not be able to tell her that he almost killed her son and now he’s missing because of him, that he was so ashamed he exiled himself--which is also just what Yoda and Obi-Wan did. So he’s following their example. When you feel too guilty, like there’s no point, it makes perfect sense to run away, and he came back when he needed to. And reminded Leia, always the more cynical one, that there was always hope, because Luke’s story from A New Hope to The Last Jedi, is always about finding hope even when the odds aren’t exactly in your favor. In The Last Jedi he had reached his lowest moment, completely losing hope. And he still found it again, because he loves his sister, he loves his nephew, and he loves Rey.

I personally thought it a beautiful and fitting conclusion to his arc. Luke was the everyman who became a hero; The Last Jedi continued that arc by showing him still becoming a hero, but after a personal failure. It showed us that there is hope even for heroes who have fallen from the hope they stood for.

In other words, Luke is a foil and likely parallel to Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren.

Ben Solo had such potential that Leia sent him to Luke for safekeeping because she knew Snoke was after him. And like Obi-Wan before him, charged with safekeeping Luke from Vader, Luke kinda messed it up by not telling Ben that his grandfather was Darth Vader, and by of course, being afraid of the darkness inside of Ben--because that darkness reminded him of his father, because that darkness reminded Luke of the darkness inside himself.

And then once Ben fell to the Dark Side, he’s too angry and mistrustful to return. Their reasoning is slightly different (but also slightly not), but both Ben and Luke isolate themselves in TLJ from the people who care most about them (specifically Leia).

But Luke returns to save Leia after Rey fails to convince him, confronts him on the wrong he did, and leaves without him. I’m quite certain Ben will do likewise in IX considering Rey has already failed to convince him, confronted him on the wrongs he is doing, and left him as a result.

#ask hamliet #the last jedi #tlj meta #sw meta #star wars #star wars meta #luke skywalker #ben solo #kylo ren #rey #leia organa #darth vader #anakin skywalker #Anonymous