Film
Returning to Skywalker is Bad, Actually
On Luke, Lore, and The Book of Boba Fett
When Luke Skywalker peaced out on Ahch-To under the twin suns of his distant home planet Tatooine in The Last Jedi (2017), I sobbed alone in the Arclight Cineramadome, for that moment the only person in the world who understood that the great hero’s journey was ending as it began. (Of course, I was not the only person; Rian Johnson clearly understood.)
The scene in the original Star Wars (1977) when Luke stands on a ridge and looks out at the sunset longing for a different life, when we first fully hear the Force Theme that for me embodies Star Wars more than even the Imperial March, is a defining moment. It tells us that we are about to go on a hero’s journey. I believe that Leia is the main character of Star Wars, but there is also room for Luke to be the hero. Both can be true.
A contingent of Star Wars fans hated The Last Jedi (TLJ) because — as far as I can tell — they couldn’t stand seeing Luke as not-the-hero. In TLJ, Luke is worn down and angry. He has made a choice to no longer be a hero. He has abandoned his own journey. He has good reasons! His attempts at doing what he believed to be the right thing (re-forming the Jedi order) backfired spectacularly and aided the rise of the first order. But some fans don’t like those reasons.
Rey and, I think more crucially, Chewbacca and R2D2 convince him to finish his journey, and he does — on his own terms. It is his final act, his swan song before the aforementioned peacing out. It is a good and glorious end.
But these fans? Were not satisfied. And among them were, apparently, Jon Favreau and one Dave Filoni. Now, I love Filoni’s work on Star Wars. LOVE. I am obsessed with Anakin Skywalker, who was an annoying little jerk in the prequel trilogy, because of The Clone Wars (2008 — more on that later). I adore The Mandalorian, which they both worked on.
In the finale of season 2 of The Mandalorian, Luke Skywalker (voiced by a computer simulation of Mark Hamill and embodied by Max Lloyd-Jones and a lot of CGI) arrives from who-knows-where to collect Yodito (I mean Grogu) from Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), who had, on Ahsoka Tano’s (Rosario Dawson) advice, taken Yodito to a sacred Jedi stone where he called through the force to any Jedi who might wish to train him. While Yodito was communing with the force, Din had tried, unsuccessfully, to fight off a garrison of dark troopers who came to steal Yodito from Din and deliver him to Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito). Din was aided in this fight by his former adversary Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen)and her new boss, Boba Fett (Temuera Morrison).
Boba. Fucking. Fett. Yeah, the one from The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Yeah, the fan-favorite bounty hunter who allegedly died after falling into the Sarlacc pit in Jedi. Indeed, the very Boba Fett who had literally zero personality on screen, other than looking very cool, but who children of the 1980s were obsessed with because of a very clever and mostly accidental marketing campaign (see Under the Helmet: The Legacy of Boba Fett, streaming on Disney+).
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Two episodes of The Mandalorian, two returning OG heroes (er, as much as one can call Fett a hero). Not to mention Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan, who are beloved by fans of The Clone Wars. The crowd, as they say, went wild.
So Luke showed up to aid Din in rescuing Yodito (I mean Grogu) and took him off to be the first student in his new Jedi school. The one that we know ends in flames later, when Ben Solo becomes Kylo Ren. Ooooooookay.
Flash forward to The Book of Boba Fett, a strange fever dream of a series that relies on neither plot nor character, but is simply a slow burn exploration of…lore? Which I guess is what the fans want. Some fans. Favreau and Filoni (and Robert Rodriguez), specifically, but based on reactions on Twitter and IMDb, plenty of others. For me, though? Going too deep into the existing lore makes the galaxy far, far closer and too small for me.
Episodes 4 and 5 of The Book did not feature Boba Fett at all, instead focusing on the ongoing adventures of Din Djarin after Grogu (ugh, fine) left with Luke. Din misses his little buddy, and when he finds the Mandalorian armorer, he has her melt down his beskar spear and make tiny armor for him. Then he travels to a forest planet where a Jedi school is being constructed, and Ahsoka Tano convinces him to stay away from Grogu, lest their strong bond distract him from his Jedi studies (this does not in any way make sense for the Ahsoka we know from The Clone Wars, who walked away from the Jedi order over their strict rules and bad decisions). Din gives her Grogu’s armor and leaves.
And then we once again meet post-Jedi Luke Skywalker (this time embodied by Graham Hamilton), training Grogu. And it is a fan’s fever dream, echoing Yoda training Luke on Degobah, complete with a training remote like Obi-Wan used to show Luke how to use a lightsaber. Luke’s training is full of nonsense the old master himself might spout. Once again there is no character, no plot, only lore. I don’t mind the show straying from Boba Fett, but I don’t like where it strayed.
I would argue that this is fan fiction. It is an imagined bridge between the original trilogy and the sequel trilogy, with absolutely no new information whatsoever. Also, there is a cute homage to Lone Wolf & Cub in which Luke asks Grogu to choose between Yoda’s lightsaber and Din’s gift. This scene utterly betrays everything we know about Luke’s character, but that’s okay because it’s cool. I guess. Maybe the problem is that it’s fan fiction, but the fans have been given the keys to the multi-billion dollar kingdom.
When The Clone Wars explored what Anakin, Ahsoka, and the actual clone troopers were doing between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, we were given more room to understand the nuances that should have been on-screen in the first place. Following the troopers and seeing the mistakes the Jedi made, getting to know Anakin Skywalker, knowing what was going to happen when Palpatine gave order 66 — all made the series a tense tightrope walk between hope (I loved the characters and desperately wanted them to be okay) and dread (I knew that, with rare exception, they would not be). The show was a deep dive into both character and plot that made the galaxy that much bigger.
There is no need to explore what Luke was up to shortly after Return of the Jedi. Or rather, there is no reason to explore it in a show that is about a crime boss attempting to take down a crime syndicate, which is ostensibly what The Book of Boba Fett is about. There are books and comics that dive into how various characters passed the time between trilogies. If a live-action Luke is what fans really, truly want, there is the option to (gasp!) cast a new, age-appropriate actor. (Sebastian Stan is right there.) I can think of no reason to hijack a series that is not in any way about Luke Skywalker and turn it into the continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker. Especially not if he is going to look like a video game cutscene whenever he speaks.
I want the ongoing Star Wars universe to expand, not shrink, and in The Book of Boba Fett, the galaxy is shrinking. We spend all of this time with Boba Fett and the various people around him, but we don’t actually get to know him at all. He begins the series as he ends it: an enigma in cool armor. I take it back: it isn’t fan fiction, because fan fiction would give us more. I wouldn’t call it fan service either, because I am not sure who it serves. I guess in theory it explores the crime factions we met in Solo, but it doesn’t really tell us anything about them, either — just kills a lot of them. Plus? It humanized the formerly one-dimensional Tuskens, who are a direct analog for Indigenous people, and then murdered them. Fan fiction would never.
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