Luke's Role in Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

[Spoilers from Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi below]

I would first like to say that I think that critically, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a great film, and if I’m being completely honest, it’s exactly what Star Wars needed to stay relevant and fresh.  However, as a die-hard Star Wars fan, I was challenged along with lots of other fans about our expectations and desires for the story and characters.  After watching it a second time and reflecting on it for several days (and reading thousands of comments on Reddit), I feel like I’ve come to a better place.

FIRST WATCH THOUGHTS:

I first want to identify what “challenged” me.  It’s not what other people have complained about (Leia in space, Finn and Rose’s scenes, etc.).  For me, it came down to this: Luke Skywalker's role in the story.

I was waiting for him to train Rey (after revealing that he was her father), swoop back in his X-Wing and personally save everyone by demonstrating his immeasurable power, climaxing in the most epic lightsaber fight of all time.  Instead, he viewed both himself and the Jedi as failures.  Sure he helped the Resistance at the end, but it wasn't how I expected it to play out.  I left the movie theater thinking that the film was great, but Luke just…wasn’t.  And then to add insult to injury, he died.

SECOND WATCH REALIZATIONS:

I realize now that it’s not at all what I thought.  The theme of this movie is that the spark of hope can come from the ashes failure.  Early on people said the theme was failure itself, or that our heroes are flawed.  

But I rejected this, as it doesn’t inspire us to do anything.  I don’t leave the theater feeling stirred.  They all failed and are flawed.  Great?  Now what?  But what I realized is that Luke is still our hero to look up to, but not in the way that we thought he would be.  As we journeyed with Luke in the Original Trilogy in becoming a Jedi, we continue to learn with him in this movie about what being a hero really means.

WHAT LUKE LEARNS IN THIS MOVIE:

Luke views himself as a failure to do his failure with Ben Solo, and thus punishes himself by going into exile.  He seems to think the Jedi ideals that failed him in guiding Ben, which is why he concludes it’s time for the Jedi to end.  But remember, this movie isn’t showing us that “our heroes are flawed,” leaving us with nothing to do about it.  This movie is telling us that the spark of hope can come from the ashes of failure.

Luke himself doesn’t understand this yet, and neither do we, the die-hard Star Wars fans waiting for Luke to just come back and single-handedly save the day.  He struggles to live up to his own legend.  He wants to be the Luke Skywalker that destroyed the Death Star and redeemed Darth Vader (and everything else that we know him to be in Legends material), but is frozen by his failure with Ben Solo.  But Yoda’s intervention makes it plain: failure is the greatest teacher. 

We the audience learn, along with Luke, that failure is ALSO a teacher, in fact the greatest teacher, and perhaps the very thing the Jedi Order was neglecting all this time.  They didn’t fall because of their bad teachings; instead, it was that they didn’t pass on the lessons of failure and weakness along with their other knowledge.  Luke is in danger of doing the same thing, but Yoda reminds Luke that it’s ok to fail, and that failure isn’t the end; and this understanding changes Luke.  Being a hero doesn’t mean you won’t fail sometimes; the spark of hope can come from the ashes of failure.

LUKE SAVES THE RESISTANCE:

When Luke appears on Crait and saves the Resistance, it’s literally the most amazing feat we’ve ever seen done with The Force.  Earlier Kylo makes the comment that if Rey tried communicating with him via The Force on her own, the effort would kill her.  Now, we see Luke project himself literally across the galaxy and not only in the mind of Kylo Ren: virtually every single being there, including droids (C-3PO sees Luke Skywalker)!

Not only that, we DO get the Extended Universe Luke Skywalker of legend. The entire scene feels like something out of the EU.  Afterwards, the legend of Luke Skywalker spreads throughout the galaxy.  As we see with the kids at the end, they talk about him as “Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master!” and how he took on the entire First Order.  

The way that we’ve come to know and understand Luke in the Extended Universe, now called Legends, is exactly how the rest of the galaxy is going to remember him now.  And he IS the final spark of hope to create the Rebellion.  Without his intervention, the Resistance would have been destroyed and all hope would have been lost.  Luke does exactly what we all wanted him to do, just now how we thought we would.

LUKE'S FINAL MOMENTS:

Many people were divided on the fact that Luke dies in this movie.  Some commented that Luke’s death was precisely how you would want Luke to go; I didn’t feel this way the first time, because the greatest expectation that I brought with me to this movie is that I didn’t want Luke to die.  When he becomes one with The Force, I was simply upset that “they did that.”  After my second viewing however, I felt differently. 

The truth is, this new trilogy is about the new characters, not about the old.  It's about passing on the torch to the next generation.  When I think about how I would really want Luke's passing on to go, that’s the perfect way for it to happen.  Saving the galaxy through his absolute mastery of The Force, being at complete peace, seeing (and hearing?) the binary sunset and becoming one with The Force.  And ultimately, we know he’ll be back in Episode IX to teach Rey Lesson 3.

IN SUMMARY: 

Although die-hard fans of Luke Skywalker may have been surprised by his role in the film, Luke still has a heroic role in this story by proving the theme of the movie to be true: that the spark of hope can come from the ashes of failure. Luke had to learn this himself, but once he does he ends up saving the Resistance, the galaxy, and inspires an entire new generation of heroes to follow in his footsteps.  The spark of hope can come from the ashes of failure.  And that’s hope for all of us.