Mark Hamill has revealed that Luke Skywalker’s huge mistake is the reason why Kylo Ren joined the dark side of the force, while also confirming that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will explore the guilt and weight he still feels in the wake of this betrayal.
While we only briefly saw Luke Skywalker right at the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, during the film we learnt that he’d tried to train Ben Solo (Adam Driver) in the ways of the Jedi, only for his nephew to be seduced to evil, turn into Kylo Ren, and then subsequently kill his father Han Solo (Harrison Ford).
Luke Skywalker’s response was to run away to the distant planet of Ahch-To, which is where Rey (Daisy Ridley) found him right at the end of The Force Awakens. Their relationship will be explored in The Last Jedi, while we’ll also learn more about what went wrong with Ben Solo.
“[Luke] made a huge mistake in thinking that his nephew was the chosen one, so he invested everything he had in Kylo, much like Obi-Wan did with my character. And he is betrayed, with tragic consequences. Luke feels responsible for that,” Mark Hamill explained to Entertainment Weekly. “That’s the primary obstacle he has to rejoining the world and his place in the Jedi hierarchy, you know? It’s that guilt, that feeling that it’s his fault, that he didn’t detect the darkness in him until it was too late.”
But don’t expect The Last Jedi to fully delve into this backstory, because Mark Hamill also revealed that most of it will be “left to your imagination.” Hamill admitted that writer and director Rian Johnson only made him privy to this information for the actor’s “own process.” Hamill added, “I talked with Rian about it and went into this elaborate scenario of what happened to Luke after the end of the Return Of The Jedi.”
We’ll get to learn what really happened between Luke Skywalker and Ben Solo/Kylo Ren when Star Wars: The Last Jedi is released on December 15.
