When The Last Jedi first came out, Mark Hamill was famously vocal about how he disagreed with how the movie portrayed Luke Skywalker as a broken-down, jaded hermit. Although the movie showed Luke almost murdering his nephew after sensing darkness in him in a moment of weakness, Hamill felt that wasn’t enough to explain why optimistic Luke would turn his back on the galaxy. Now, Hamill has revealed his own head canon for why Luke exiled himself – and it actually makes perfect sense.
Mark Hamill’s Dark Head Canon
In an interview on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, Mark Hamill called The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson “one of the most gifted directors I’ve ever worked with” and said that Johnson allowed him to make up his own backstory for Luke. Here is the explanation Mark Hamill provides for how Luke would become so jaded:
“I thought, what could make someone give up a devotion to what is basically a religious entity, to give up being a Jedi? Well, the love of a woman. So he falls in love with a woman. He gives up being a Jedi. They have a child together. At some point the child, as a toddler, picks up an unattended lightsaber, pushes the button and is killed instantly. The wife is so full of grief, she kills herself.”
Why It Makes Sense
For one thing, Luke was married in the Star Wars Legends book timeline (which is separate from the Disney timeline). He was married to fan favorite Mara Jade, who was eventually murdered by Luke’s Legends dark side nephew, Jacen Solo. For another thing, it would help explain why Luke was so quick to draw his lightsaber on a sleeping Ben Solo if Luke had already suffered such a colossal tragedy: he would be terrified of losing the few people he had left.
In The Mandalorian, Luke is still in the process of building his Jedi academy, and The Mandalorian takes place around five years after Return of the Jedi. Let’s imagine that Luke lost his wife and child a couple of years before that and decided to go back to his original plan to train a new generation of Jedi.
Suffering such a loss would add more weight to the ultimatum that Luke gives Grogu in The Book of Boba Fett, where he tells the child that he can either go back to Din Djarin or become a Jedi – but not both. Losing his family might make Luke feel that the old Jedi Order was right about forbidding attachments because attachments lead to suffering.
What Did Mark Hamill Think About The Last Jedi?
Despite disagreeing with Johnson about Luke’s portrayal, Mark Hamill calls The Last Jedi “a great movie.” While his head canon may not be official canon, it can add more weight to Luke losing control and drawing a lightsaber on Ben in a desperate attempt to protect those he loves. It also adds to the guilt he feels afterwards. If he lost both his child and his nephew to the same lightsaber, who could blame him for wanting to toss it?
