With Star Wars: The Last Jedi only two months away now, we’re starting to get a trickle of leaks giving us a peek into some details of the upcoming film. Potentially one of the juiciest rumors comes from reports of an advance copy of canon novel Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi: The Legends of Luke Skywalker, written by award-winning science fiction author Ken Liu.
The book is intended for junior readers and like we mentioned above, is considered canon, containing in-universe myths about legendary Jedi Luke Skywalker. Word is that it revolves around a group of children en route to The Last Jedi‘s casino planet of Canto Bight. To pass the time, they swap tall tales and rumors about Luke, who’s mysteriously disappeared.
One of these apparently concerns the character’s relationship with the Force post-Return of the Jedi. In an effort to further understand the nature of the Jedi and Sith, he travels to the forgotten planet of Lew’el, which is inhabited by people who ride giant birds. There, Luke discovers that they teach the Force as the Tide, and that only disaster comes when people attempt to interfere with it. Thus, they don’t believe in the Dark Side and feel that any attempt to control it is misuse.
Luke’s interested in all this, of course, and apparently puts Yoda’s training aside and starts learning the ways of the Tide. As such, fans have now jumped to the conclusion that since Luke’s studied under the people of Lew’el and taken on their beliefs and teachings, that he himself doesn’t believe in the Dark Side of the Force anymore – since they don’t. If true, this would debunk all those theories of the character turning evil in The Last Jedi.
File this strictly in the rumor cabinet for now, but it all seems weirdly plausible and if true, it’s going to sound awfully strange being delivered in exposition by an aged Luke to a presumably baffled Rey. Bear in mind that this is very much unconfirmed and there’s every chance that some joker is just making this stuff up to screw with us. Even if they aren’t, though, this is all part of a tale told by a child to other children, so who knows if it’s true even in-universe?
Despite all those caveats, it’s looking all but certain that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will see the franchise develop the concept of the Force in all sorts of interesting ways, which is definitely exciting to hear.