Luke Skywalker was despairing for longer than we may admit
it starts with Owen and Beru’s deaths, then Obi-Wan’s, then Biggs’s death. he’s nineteen when he signs up for a suicide mission readily, instinctively, without thinking twice. it just feels like what he’s meant to do.
in Empire Luke nearly gets himself killed and needs Han to risk his own life to save him. and then he manages to slow the Empire but can’t keep them from overrunning the Hoth base.
he tries to train his skills and his patience but neither progress very far. he has visions of becoming his most dreadful, most evil enemy. then he finds out his friends are in danger and runs off to save them, but it turns out to be a trap and he ends up maimed and confronted with a horrible, unbelievable truth
and he literally tries to kill himself. lets go and falls.
in RotJ he turns himself over to Vader and the Emperor out of fear that his friends will be in danger otherwise
he starts the movie watching Leia get captured and debased; Palp and Vader catch on that he’s got a sister and threaten to corrupt Leia as well and he absolutely loses it and nearly goes Dark before he realizes he’s trying to hack his own father to pieces with a saber.
once again, all Luke can do is make peace with his own end, and try not to lose his soul. he is helpless. the war is won as he’s screaming and twitching on the floor in horrendous agony. when he recovers, he finds his father – the father he thought he lost before he ever knew – back from some kind of death, and already dying a second time. there’s so much fatigue and pain layered into the victory. the movie doesn’t even end with the heroes returning to be honored by the galaxy. it’s just a celebration with a little group of allies on a remote planet, watched over by ghosts.
Luke was always going to need to face the fear that his very existence brought suffering and harm and death to everyone he loved. he was never a triumphant, confident champion. he was a young man growing up too fast from relentless loss. when it looked like his worst fears were coming true, he panicked. when his moment of panic brought those fears to fruition, and he crawled out of the wreckage surrounded by dead children he must have loved as if they were his own, he chose, as he did over and over, to surrender his will to live
it takes meeting a strange girl who believes in Luke the way Luke believed in Anakin — a myth, a source of strength and bravery — to tip the scales. he thinks, I’ll lose her the way I lost everyone else. I’m too dangerous. I hurt people I love. just like my father did. and this girl tells him, I believe in what you did for your father. I believe you brought him back, I believe he was saved, I believe anyone can be saved, or deserved to be given a chance.
even the man who hurts the people he loves
I love these metas and analyses that take young, pre-RotJ Luke way more seriously than fandom usually take him.
i kept scrolling down expecting a punchline but no this is just a kickin’ rad adaption of that scene from ESB!!!! or, wait, of… the entire movies?????? omg
Listen, there is an approximately 0% chance that Luke Skywalker doesn’t speak Huttese. He is fluent in Huttese, and probably in multiple dialects. He was beyond any doubt perfectly capable of communicating with Jabba the Hutt directly, in Jabba’s own language.
But he doesn’t. He insistently uses Basic when talking to Jabba, and he makes Threepio translate Jabba’s words before he replies. He acts for all the world as if he needs the translation.
Which he doesn’t. And Jabba must know damn well that he doesn’t. Because he introduced himself as Luke Skywalker, and that’s an unmistakably Tatooine name (and a slave name, at that).
Conclusion: Literally every word Luke Skywalker speaks throughout his interaction with Jabba if a veiled “fuck you.” Every single word.
see i know that we all like to make fun of luke skywalker, hick farmer from the back of nowhere, thinking that shooting womp rats with the space equivalent of his dad’s old rifle is somehow sufficient preparation for taking down the death star; but i love the idea that actually womp rats are six foot abominations of teeth, spines & poison and bulls-eyeing them is actually excellent preparation for the rebellion. think about it: swarms of six foot rats, and some skinny kid with an outdated weapon taking them out, cool as paint. hardened soldiers whisper scary stories to each other, about the monsters who scavenge in the sands, stripping a camp of everything living in five seconds flat, and luke just saying oh, womp rats? they’re nothing. great with a bit of butter and some toast.
REMEMBER THAT HE TOLD WEDGE, “THEY’RE NOTMUCH BIGGER THAN TWO METERS” LIKE THAT’S SOME MINOR INCONVENIENCE
BIGGER THAN TWO METERS
Wedge: So, you’ve been to Tatooine
Han: Yeah
Wedge: Womp rats?
Han: Sure. Chewie uses ‘em for bowcaster practice. Kinda gamey tasting. Sandy colored fur, lotsa teeth, little over two meters…
Wedge: Luke wasn’t lying???
Luke (head inside X-wing panel, tinkering): Why would I make THAT up?
Honestly, I’ve always thought that farm work on Tatooine, unintentionally, must have provided a fairly excellent groundwork in establishing Luke’s baby Jedi skills outside of an academy context.
There are of course the aforementioned womp rats, which are both terrifying and a fantastic way to develop shooting skills.
There’s beggar’s canyon for piloting. And if Phantom Menace brought us nothing else, it actually showed us the living death trap that is beggar’s canyon. He’s not like zipping around the Grand Canyon, he’s literally goofing off in a place that killed off a shit ton of professional pod racers. So needless to say, Luke’s had a chance to develop scary good reflexes, information processing, and spacial relation skills.
The Lars’s economic status means that they had to make do with ancient, crap equipment. Luke would have learned how to make incredibly fine tuned repairs, and keep shit going forever. And sure, he never built a C3PO or a pod racer, but honestly, if he found the materials to do it, he probably would have used them in a moisture collector.
And there’s even combat experience. From what we know about Tatooine, a farm like the Lars Homestead, would have been at risk for attacks by raiders, Jabba’s goons, and any of the terrifying hellbeasts that populate that planet. It’s not like Jedi temple training or anything. But Luke definitely learned to be cool under pressure, even when outnumbered or with really old, shit equipment.
I would just like to note that in The Old Republic MMORPG (set three thousand years before the movies) the womp rats are not only two meters long, covered in spines, with teeth as long as my hand, and sometimes DISEASED
BUT THEY ALSO ATTACK IN PACKS
You think you just pissed off ONE rodent as long as you are tall? Oh no. It’s calling ALL SIXTEEN OF ITS FRIENDS
AND THEY ARE ALL AIMING TO BITE YOUR CROTCH OFF.
*THAT’S* what Luke grew up sniping to keep them away from the droids and moisture vaporators. *THAT* (and Beggar’s Canyon) is what prepared him to take down the Death Star.
Womp rats are bad news.
My favorite thing is that they are just one example of how Luke doesn’t know he’s from a Death Planet until he leaves it.
i’m just going to reblog this so you can all enjoy the excellent commentary about my space son who is equal parts sunshine and tempered death
So you’re saying he’s not from Space Nevada, he’s from Space Australia
Reblogging for @flaminganakin‘s brilliant tags. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Anakin’s fatal flaw wasn’t his anger or his pride or his love for Padme. It was his deference. Luke is a good man because he refuses to compromise his morality just because some one else told him his should. Anakin fails as a good man specifically because he repeatedly compromises on things he knows are wrong. He gives in to his mother and Qui-Gon’s urging to leave Tatooine. He gives in to Obi-Wan’s orders to forget his dreams and his mother. He gives in over and over and over during the Clone Wars until, by the time of RotS, he no longer even knows how to listen to his own moral compass. As Vader, he is exactly the man the Jedi told him to be: unquestioningly obedient to authority with no attachments except the Force.
Luke is the exact opposite. He rejects the teachers of his ‘wise masters’ and insists, outright and without shame, on doing things his way. And he succeeds where they failed. Not by being a good solider (good soldiers fallow orders), but by being a good man.
“Anakin’s fatal flaw wasn’t his anger or his pride or his love for Padme. It was his deference.”
Funny how it’s Luke’s attachment and love for his friends (and later his love for his father, though he was corrupted) that saved the day. And funny how it’s Anakin’s continual sacrifice of those attachments (his mother, his wife) that leads him to complete mental instability.
This is from Dead Poets Society: “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” The Jedi are so wrapped up in their notions of spiritual purity that they become completely dissociated from their own morality, and they see the Force as an end unto itself, rather than a force (hah) for good.
Example 1: slavery’s still a thing in the Republic? Even though it’s illegal? Should we do something about that? … Nah, better to not get involved. What the fuck?
The Jedi think they’ve figured out the meaning of life, but they’ve completely neglected the purpose. Spiritual excellence becomes divorced from moral excellence in a way that is completely arbitrary and therefore inherently unstable.
this is all to say, FUCK YOU YODA
i think we’re about to see this moral borne out with the third trilogy. rey is going to be like “hey teach, show me how to hit things. no, i’ll decide what to hit, thanks.” the jedi way is irrelevant; her own conscience will be her guide.
scrappy desert kid versus jedi philosophy, three ways.
just moving along like everyone else 