Star Wars Fans Believe The Wildest Theory About Luke Skywalker

Dubbed “The Bigger Luke Hypothesis,” by the fans that believe in it, the tale of two Lukes is a rabbit hole that even the bravest Star Wars fans don’t want to venture down. To put it in the simplest terms possible, Bigger Luke, or BL as it’s sometimes abbreviated, is a slightly larger version of Luke Skywalker that allegedly appears in certain scenes from the original Star Wars Trilogy. And we mean it when we say that the height difference is slight.

Bigger Luke supposedly stands a measly 2 to 3cm taller than Regular Luke—or Luke Prime, as some fans refer to him. How did fans discover Bigger Luke? Someone noticed a few scenes in A New Hope where Luke Skywalker looked taller than usual next to Han Solo and decided to skip right over the obvious causes like posture and camera perspective and instead decided the only logical answer was two Lukes.

This led to like-minded fans scouring the entire trilogy for scenes where Luke stands next to Han and measuring the height discrepancies between them. This practice is known as “Luking,” and… hoo boy….I wish we were making all of this up. Unfortunately, the Bigger Luke Hypothesis is not only real, but it’s actually two different overlapping hypotheses.

Believers in Bigger Luke are split into two camps: those who believe in The Canon Luke Hypothesis and those who believe in The Hamill Hypothesis. The Canon Luke Hypothesis theorizes that canonically, there are two different Luke Skywalkers running around the Star Wars universe. For this theory to be true, one has to subscribe to the belief that George Lucas purposely inserted a slightly bigger Luke Skywalker into A New Hope as some super-hidden Easter egg whose meaning is known only to the director himself.

Meanwhile, the Hamill Hypothesis isn’t logical anymore. The second version of the Bigger Luke theory posits that an uncredited stunt double with an uncanny resemblance to Mark Hamill replaced the actor in certain scenes of the original trilogy for reasons that, again, only Lucas would know. This theory also assumes that in the nearly 50 years since the first Star Wars movie was released, no one has outed this mysterious stuntman. In an age where movie trailers routinely spoil their own twists, it’s hard to believe that a secret like that would remain hidden for so long.

There are, of course, several scenes that allegedly “prove” The Bigger Luke Hypothesis. One of the funniest comes from The Empire Strikes Back. During Luke’s arrival on Cloud City, roughly an hour-and-a-half into the movie, Lando lays eyes on Luke Skywalker for the first time and quickly looks away, unimpressed.

A minute or two later, as Luke narrowly dodges a blaster bolt from an Imperial Stormtrooper, Lando again spots the Jedi-in-training, but this time, something causes him to pause for a second. According to Bigger Luke theorists, this is because the keen-eyed Lando noticed the second Luke was slightly bigger than the first.

If that’s not enough to convince you that Bigger Luke is real, don’t feel bad. We have a hard time subscribing to The Bigger Luke Hypothesis as well. However, given some of the weird stuff that is canon in Star Wars, like “Fake Wedge,” we wouldn’t be completely surprised if the theory did become canon at some point.