Back in May, there were a slew of new revelations about Star Wars: The Last Jedi, thanks to Vanity Fair’s extensive cover story on the sci-fi sequel from director Rian Johnson. One of the more intriguing pieces of information came from Mark Hamill, who revealed that he fundamentally disagreed with every decision the filmmaker made for his character Luke Skywalker, but he took on his job as an actor to bring Johnson’s vision to life without any further debate.
Now Mark Hamill has revealed one possible path that he was hoping to explore as Luke Skywalker in this new Star Wars trilogy. While it might sounds a little bit crazy and ridiculous, it’s a narrative that was explored in the storylines we now refer to as Star Wars Legends, and it involves an evil Luke Skywalker twin.
The October issue of Empire (via MoviePilot) has a big feature on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and part of that cover story includes an interview with Mark Hamill where he revealed the idea that he pitched to Lucasfilm when the story of his character had yet to be determined. Hamill said:
“Oh baby, would I love to play my own evil twin! It’d be great because you could maybe not reveal it’s Evil Luke until the real Luke shows up. We could watch this guy undermining the good guys secretly, maybe even killing a supporting character out of everyone’s sight so they all go, ‘What’s going on? He’s crazy!’ And then, of course, the good Luke shows up.”
The idea of unknowingly following an evil twin of Luke Skywalker is an interesting one, but it’s the existence of an evil twin of Luke Skywalker that’s a little bit of a hard pill to swallow. The idea of introducing an evil version of a hero is somewhat of a tired trope, though it can be used effectively, as evidenced by Logan earlier this year. But there’s just something about this concept that sounds ridiculous. Still, Hamill thought it could work, pitched it to Lucasfilm, but says, “When I suggested that storyline they said, ‘Well, it’s been done.’”
Indeed, there is a storyline from Timothy Zahn’s novel Star Wars: The Last Command which introduces a clone of Luke Skywalker, ridiculously named Luuke Skywalker, and it’s a story that doesn’t feel like it would work well in the movies, even if it sounds easy to incorporate into the current Star Wars narrative.
In The Last Command, the clone of Luke Skywalker was created by extracting cells from the hand of Luke Skywalker that was lost in his battle with Darth Vader on Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. The hand and his lightsaber were recovered by Darth Vader, taken to Emperor Palaptine’s Mount Tantiss lair on the planet Wayland and eventually the real Skywalker had to fight his clone. In the end, the clone ended up being defeated by Mara Jade, who would become Luke’s wife in later stories.
With all the focus on Luke Skywalker’s old lightsaber and the fact that it’s likely switched hands several times before landing in Rey’s possession, it would stand to reason that this could have played out in the years between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, with the evil Luke Skywalker biding his time until he could do the most damage to the Rebels/Resistance. That would have made for a hell of a twist, and would be an understandable explanation for why Luke Skywalker believes the Jedi must come to an end. But I have a feeling the reason Rian Johnson came up with for Luke Skywalker to come to that conclusion will be far more interesting and substantial.
In the end, Mark Hamill came around to Rian Johnson’s plan for Luke Skywalker anyway, and he even came to realize that it was the better decision for the character. Hamill said, “Being the caretaker of the character I have a possessive attitude towards him, but even though it’s not the way I would have gone, the more I got into the work, the more I realized I was wrong.”
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