Luke Skywalker Can Be Saved By Disney With A Radical Reveal
As far as death goes, Luke Skywalker’s seemed pretty final. Not only did his body physically evaporate, but he also showed up as a ghost—two things that would be pretty hard to reverse. Redditors gotta Reddit, though, and there’s a theory floating around on the platform that the Luke Skywalker of the sequel trilogy was a clone, leaving the real Luke free to show up and save the day in the future.
We Already Know Palpatine May Have Canonically Cloned Luke
While this particular theory is probably just another way for butthurt fanbois to pretend The Last Jedi doesn’t exist, the idea of a Luke Skywalker clone is not a new one. In the canon comic Star Wars: Darth Vader #11, Emperor Palpatine is shown to have a severed hand in his possession that is heavily implied to be the hand Luke lost at the end of Empire Strikes Back. The comic further implies that Palps is using the DNA from the hand in his cloning experiments.
Is Snoke Connected To Luke?
The idea is to possibly link Skywalker’s DNA to the creation of the sequel villain, Supreme Leader Snoke. There are hints that Snoke is some kind of genetic Frankenstein—e.g. a vat full of Snoke bodies in The Rise of Skywalker—but who he was cloned from and to what extent has yet to be revealed in canon. While it’s highly unlikely he will turn out to be a full-on 1:1 Luke Skywalker clone, having some Grade A Tatooine Farmboy cells in him would certainly explain his powerful force abilities.
Luuke, The Legends Clone
Meanwhile, the concept of a Luke Skywalker clone being grown from Luke’s severed hand is much older than the current canon. In the 1993 novel The Last Command, Timothy Zahn introduced the infamous Skywalker doppelganger Luuke. The clone existed pretty much as a way to satisfy Mara Jade’s burning desire to murder Luke Skywalker and is largely regarded as one of the weaker aspects of Zahn’s Thrawn trilogy.
The wonky extra vowel was something Zahn introduced in clone names as a way of differentiating them from their original sources. It works in print—barely—but falls apart when anyone tries to pronounce the name out loud.
Jake Skywalker
This newest “Luke Skywalker is secretly a clone,” theory was most likely cooked up as a headcanon way for fans who didn’t agree with Luke’s portrayal in the Star Wars sequels to justify him acting “out of character.” Many of them already consider the sequel Luke to secretly be Jake Skywalker—an offhanded comment from a single Mark Hamill interview that certain fans have glommed onto—and this theory just reinforces that premise.
Don’t Hold Your Breath
Unfortunately for the fans that desperately wanted Luke to stay the brash, twenty-something he was in Return of the Jedi forever, this theory has about as much chance of coming true as the one about retconning the sequels out of existence. Disgruntled Star Wars fans don’t have to like it, but Disney Star Wars is here; it exists, and no amount of whining or pretending is going to change that.
Those who are desperate for a Luke Skywalker clone are free to go back and read Timothy Zahn’s original Thrawn trilogy anytime they want.
