Even by The Last Jedi‘s own lofty standards, it has been a busy weekend for Rian Johnson’s forthcoming sequel.
With excerpts of Ken Liu’s The Legends of Luke Skywalker flooding the Internet, the impassioned Star Wars community has identified Luke’s Force powers, all the while debunking those incessant rumors of Mark Hamill’s Jedi succumbing to the dark side.
Then again, we should stress that although Liu’s six-part anthology is considered canon, it’s essentially a collection of myths and tall tales about the legendary Luke Skywalker, all of which are designed to fill in some of the gaps between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Told through the eyes of a young spaceship crew, that means those stories skate the line between truth and hearsay, so it’s unlikely they’ll have much of a bearing on Lucasfilm’s film saga.
Still, The Legends of Luke Skywalker provides some welcome context to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with one excerpt, in particular, pointing to Luke’s alleged involvement in the Battle of Jakku. The remnants of that conflict were littered throughout The Force Awakens, with Rey (Daisy Ridley) seeking shelter in a downed AT-AT. And for those of you who played EA’s rebooted Battlefront, the Battle of Jakku ought to be overly familiar.
But it seems Skywalker had a presence in said battle, as in Ken Liu’s “The Starship Graveyard,” a young crew member recounts a story she first heard from an Imperial officer who had fought under Emperor Palpatine:
I did not see any rebel star cruisers that could have launched the beams. In fact, the shots all seemed to terminate in the steadily spinning hologram of the Jedi, his machine of death, that red-striped X-wing, hovering over him like a trained bird of prey or a magician’s familiar.
It’s an interesting history lesson regarding Luke but again, we can’t imagine this will have much of an impact on the outcome of Lucasfilm’s Skywalker saga. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, meanwhile, is poised to light up theaters on December 15th.
