Will Disney and Lucasfilm ever put Luke Skywalker and his extended group of friends and associates behind them to embrace a brave new era of Star Wars storytelling that doesn’t need to lean on the past for inspiration? Looking at the lineup of streaming projects at least, probably not.
The Mandalorian obviously roped in a de-aged Mark Hamill for a cameo in the season 2 finale, but that’s just the tip of the Skywalker-centric iceberg. The Book of Boba Fett follows a character who scrapped with Luke in Return of the Jedi before he met his supposed demise in a Sarlacc pit, Andor is a prequel to a prequel about stealing the plans for the Death Star that Luke eventually blew up, Ahsoka‘s title heroine was his father’s Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi focuses on the man who will eventually become his mentor and Lando Calrissian is more than familiar with the star of the Original Trilogy.
Luke’s shadow will always loom over Star Wars from the looks of it, then, and that’s even without considering the mountains of speculation that continually link Sebastian Stan with playing a younger version of the pop culture icon. In fact, tipster Mikey Sutton is now reporting that future adventures set in a galaxy far, far away will explore the missing years of Luke’s existence in between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
There’s admittedly potential in seeing what happened to the all-powerful Jedi before he became a disillusioned old hermit that turned his back on the Force, and the Disney Plus roster is certainly looking to the expanded universe for inspiration. That being said, there are only so many times you can return to the well before it runs dry, and not everything in Star Wars has to be connected to Luke Skywalker in some fashion.
Published: May 18, 2021 07:21 am