Luke Skywalker Wasn’t A Jedi? The Truth Finally Comes Out
The Mandalorian showrunners think Luke Skywalker isn't a Jedi because no one officially conferred the title on him.
The past few years have had more ups and downs for Star Wars fans than any Jedi trial. We’ve seen some real lowlights for the franchise (like Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and The Book of Boba Fett) but also unforgettable highlights such as Andor and The Mandalorian. But in a recent interview with Screen Rant, that show’s executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni debated the finer points of Star Wars lore when Filoni dropped a bombshell: Luke Skywalker may not actually be a Jedi.
It’s a pretty weird announcement, especially when Luke Skywalker headlined a movie named Return of the Jedi. And in his confrontation with the Emperor, Luke boldly throws away his lightsaber, defiantly telling the malevolent Sith that he is a Jedi, like his father before him. However, Filoni’s point, whether or not you believe him, comes down to what makes someone a Jedi.
For example, in the interview, Filoni points out that Luke Skywalker never got an official confirmation from Yoda that he was now a Jedi Knight, with Yoda instead pointing out that Luke must first confront his father, the evil Darth Vader. Filoni seems to be taking the “knight” part pretty seriously, and if the last people who would be qualified to confer that title on Luke are dead (namely, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda), then “Jedi” is more of a self-applied label that might not mean very much.
However, this part of the interview turned into a miniature argument when Jon Favreau pointed out that Yoda does tell Luke Skywalker that the young warrior will be “the last Jedi” when Yoda is gone. Filoni immediately fired back that we have already seen other Jedi survivors pop up in various forms of canonical media (such as the upcoming Star Wars: Jedi Survivor), meaning that Yoda was incorrect about that statement. The two seemingly agreed to disagree, and Favreau quickly joked that debating about these things is what they used to do for free in high school lunchrooms, and they now get paid to figure these things out.
While they didn’t get into it during this interview, it’s worth noting that Luke Skywalker wasn’t acting like much of a Jedi in the film The Last Jedi. That movie showed us a Luke who had largely turned his back on the Jedi and the ways of the Force. While he valiantly sacrificed himself to save Rey, who then became the last of the Jedi, we are left with the same problem: Rey had even less training than Luke and had no living Jedi Masters to confer a title on her, making the concept of how one “officially” becomes a Jedi looser than ever before.
Now that the third season of The Mandalorian has premiered, we may get answers regarding Luke Skywalker and the Jedi sooner rather than later. It’s only a matter of time before more of Disney’s impressive CGI wizardry (which, like Emperor Palpatine, seems to have “unlimited power”) gives us more de-aged Mark Hamill and more onscreen adventures of Luke Skywalker as a Jedi Master. With any luck, we’ll learn more about the ways of the Jedi and the Force and the circumstances that turned Luke into a hermit who seems to live off nothing but green milk and crusty proverbs.
