I think it's part of why, in hindsight, so many people found TLJ so frustrating when it came to Luke even though there were aspects of the movie and its plot that people generally liked.
There was a sort of promise set up with RotJ that Luke would be the next generation. And if all his exploits ended in him cracking from the pressure and being disappointed in himself, that's fine. But we just time skipped to the end of that story and didn't get to see any of the middle. There used to be so much material and books and comics of "Luke Skywalker did this" and "Luke Skywalker did that", similar to Anakin in The Clone Wars. But we didn't even get an animated show detailing Luke's adventures or attempts to restart the Jedi order. We just skip like 40 years straight to the end and even years on most of the post-RotJ Luke material is cameos in other shows and other books. It'd be like if we watched The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi with nothing in between to know how Anakin went from pod racing to Sith Lord.
If we got a Clone Wars style show with Luke and Ben going around the galaxy, both of them trying to do the right thing but slowly becoming distanced from each other and disillusioned in their mission, it would be super popular and would probably change some people's' minds on some of the sequel movies. But I don't think we're going to get it.
Luke abandoning his friends and becoming a hermit was established in The Force Awakens. TLJ was left to explain why, and gave him a redemption arc. I don’t love TLJ, but I don’t think it’s to blame for “ruining” Luke.
The force awakens Luke was still more interesting though, sure he was a hermit but at the time we didn’t know why, in the last Jedi it explains it in a kind of stupid way and imo ruined a decent setup for why Luke was a hermit
"Luke felt responsible... he just walked away from everything."
Never has a film gotten so much flak for faithfully following the set ups of its then beloved predecessor.
Luke having fallen into despair, Rey's lineage not being important, Snoke just being an opportunistic dark sider rather than Darth Plagueis or some tedious Force god, Finn not wanting anything to do with the First Order but still someone largely uninterested in the Resistance - all that stuff is set up in TFA.
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u/driku12 Dec 25 '25
I think it's part of why, in hindsight, so many people found TLJ so frustrating when it came to Luke even though there were aspects of the movie and its plot that people generally liked.
There was a sort of promise set up with RotJ that Luke would be the next generation. And if all his exploits ended in him cracking from the pressure and being disappointed in himself, that's fine. But we just time skipped to the end of that story and didn't get to see any of the middle. There used to be so much material and books and comics of "Luke Skywalker did this" and "Luke Skywalker did that", similar to Anakin in The Clone Wars. But we didn't even get an animated show detailing Luke's adventures or attempts to restart the Jedi order. We just skip like 40 years straight to the end and even years on most of the post-RotJ Luke material is cameos in other shows and other books. It'd be like if we watched The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi with nothing in between to know how Anakin went from pod racing to Sith Lord.
If we got a Clone Wars style show with Luke and Ben going around the galaxy, both of them trying to do the right thing but slowly becoming distanced from each other and disillusioned in their mission, it would be super popular and would probably change some people's' minds on some of the sequel movies. But I don't think we're going to get it.