Rian Johnson Explains Luke’s Final Scene In Star Wars: The Last Jedi

It’s no secret that Star Wars: The Last Jedi has split the fandom right down the middle, with a huge portion of viewers feeling that the movie trampled on much of what had gone before. In particular, perhaps the biggest controversy surrounds the film’s treatment of Luke Skywalker, who’s revealed to have abandoned the Jedi ways and left the galaxy in the First Order’s hands.

Whatever your feelings about Luke’s storyline, though, you have to admit that his final scene in The Last Jedi is breathtakingly beautiful and sure to reduce anyone who’s adored the character since childhood to tears. To jog your memory, it features Mark Hamill’s Jedi master passing away on Ahch-To, as he looks out at the planet’s twin sunset – an homage to Luke’s time on Tatooine in A New Hope. 

While talking with The Huffington Post, The Last Jedi‘s editor Bob Duscay explained the thinking behind the sequence. Though he said it was a challenge to accomplish, he’s proud of the finished product as it was both “nostalgic and hopeful.”

“It’s a purely cinematic scene. There’s no dialogue. There’s no action. It’s all emotion and character and figuring out exactly how to communicate to the audience what we want to communicate. We spent an enormous amount of time on it.”

Likewise, director Rian Johnson was on hand to discuss his thinking behind killing Luke off in this way. Many feel that it was a mistake to write out a character who still has so much more to give the franchise. However, Johnson argued that Luke’s final act will leave such a legacy that it represented the ultimate thing he could do in the fight against evil.

“It does go back a little bit to what he said at the beginning (of The Last Jedi). “What do you think one guy walking out there with a lightsaber (can do)?” … The answer is: Create a legend that will spread hope. And once he’s done that, combined with the physical toll it’s taken on him, you can make the case that then there’s nothing more powerful that he could accomplish.”

Johnson makes some very interesting and valid points. Still, they’re unlikely to change the minds of those who disliked the movie and would have wanted to see more of the iconic character in the upcoming Star Wars: Episode IX.