The one character that every Star Wars fan is mystified by is the one we've arguably known the longest. Clues about Luke in The Last Jedi are few and far between, but they're also the most precious. Thankfully, when Mark Hamill took the stage at Star Wars Celebration 2017, he delivered a few morsels (with an assist from Kathleen Kennedy.)
"There’s so much unsaid about where he’s done and where he’s been," Hamill offered, referring mostly the mystery we're all so painfully aware of. "I realized that’s not important to the story of the force awakens. I still made up [a backstory] myself." (Unfortunately for Hamill, he says JJ Abrams simply "patted my head, gave me a cookie, and sent me away.")
Even more unfortunately, Hamill says we won't actually get all the answers we want. "There’s a lot of mystery around him even in the film [The Last Jedi], so you’ll have to fill in your own backstory," he said, adding that comic books and novels may fill in some gaps eventually.
But to that, Kennedy had one rebuttal: "He is so significantly important to this film."
And judging from the poster, I'd say she's got a point:
Curiously, both Luke and Kylo Ren seem to be giving menacing stares, both bathed in that classic Dark Side palate of blood red. Could Luke be nothing like the young whippersnapper we once knew?
Earlier in the same panel, Daisy Ridley teased Rey's meeting with Luke, suggesting that old adage that you shouldn't meet your heroes may actually be true.
"It’s difficult when you meet your heroes because it might not be what you expect," she said.
Add this to the fact that in the trailer, Luke says he wants the Jedi to end and we've got a whole other mystery on our hands. But let's be honest: If they're going to bring Luke back, they're going to have to shake things up. He can't be the kid who was running off to get power converters anymore. He's got to be someone darker, someone changed by everything he's seen. And that change may be more uncomfortable than we've ever fathomed.
