Luke Skywalker Showing Up Was The Worst Thing That Could Happen For The Mandalorian — And The Fandom Cheered
By: David Lein
Tags: Star Wars, Ahsoka Tano, Mandalorian, Luke Skywalker

In many ways, ‘The Mandalorian’ jumped the shark in its Season 2 finale.

As a lifelong Star Wars fan, and one who has become even more engrossed in the franchise in recent years, I’ve said from the very beginning of this show that, as a viewer, I expressly did not want it to cross paths with the Skywalker Saga. The movies therein have become so controversial that they’re no longer fun to talk about online, and what drew me deeper into the franchise was discovering the stories and adventures that ran adjacent to the Saga, as it were, not continued it; occupied the same world without being overburdened by lore and fan expectations. One of my favorite things about ‘Rogue One’ was that it did not star any Jedi or big-name protagonists, even with Vader and Leia making appearances. The first season of ‘The Mandalorian’ seemed to be exactly what I wanted: a new show with new characters exploring new corners of the galaxy, far from all the melodrama happening on the silver screen.

And then, in Chapter 16, when all seems lost for our heroes, a lone X-Wing flies into frame…

It’s good, Jon. The scene is good.

And you are a Warwickshire shithouse.

In retrospect, this felt inevitable. Just as it was probably inevitable that a show called ‘The Mandalorian’ would eventually feature Boba Fett, the premise of discovering a force-sensitive child at this point in the timeline perhaps led inexorably to Luke Skywalker. Especially after the Season 1 finale when Din Djarin is tasked with taking Grogu to a Jedi, fan theories ran rampant as to who could show up to train the child. While names like Ezra Bridger, Cal Kestis, and, um, Mace Windu were thrown around, the two most likely answers were Luke and Ahsoka Tano. Both have now appeared, in an already crossover and cameo-filled season.

Watching Luke in the final minutes of the episode, I already knew exactly how much of the fandom would react.

“This is the Luke we wanted in the sequel trilogy!”

“Finally Luke portrayed as he should be!”

“That was Luke Skywalker, not Jake Skywalker!”

“Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni understand Luke so much better than Ruin Johnson!!”

This is Luke in what I guess you would call his prime. The episode did an excellent job of setting up the Dark Troopers as terrifying and near unstoppable. As they pound an ‘Iron Man’ reference into the blast doors separating them from our heroes, Moff Gideon accurately gloats that the droids represent certain death for everyone in the room except him and Grogu. They are Din’s literal worst nightmare, deadlier Terminators even than the B2 super battle droids that killed his family.

Luke cuts through them like tissue paper. It was undeniably thrilling to see what a Jedi Master is really capable of, and the Dark Troopers were well used as both a true threat and ultimately a nonlethal means for Luke to show off his full power. This is indeed the Luke many fans have wanted to see for actual decades — in fandom parlance, this was Legends Luke.

But it was also the Luke of ‘The Last Jedi,’ and it’s Favreau’s deft melding of the two that’s making me begrudgingly accept his appearance in my fun little ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’ show.

I am sure many fans cheered as they watched Luke sweep through the halls of the Imperial cruiser, as I myself have cheered any number of times throughout the show. I was surprisingly unsettled.

The first cue that something is off is the music. While ‘Star Wars’ is known for its bravura orchestral themes with dramatic horns accompanying the feats of daring do onscreen, Luke’s scene is scored more forebodingly, even ominously. The low electronics and haunting choir hardly seem to herald a triumphant hero’s entrance.

One could argue this is merely heightening the suspense and delaying the reveal, which leads us next to the staging.

As Luke moved unhurriedly through the ship’s halls, leaving destruction in his wake, I was reminded of Anakin Skywalker in Episode III, piloting a lone starfighter to Mustafar along with R2-D2, moving through the Separatist complex hooded and caped, cutting down enemies with wide powerful slashes. When Luke exits the elevator outside the bridge, the framing and choreography explicitly parallel the iconic ‘Hallway Scene’ from the aforementioned ‘Rogue One,’ in which Darth Vader slaughters a dozen Rebels in possibly his scariest appearance in the franchise.

“I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” Isn’t that kind of the problem?

Here was Luke Skywalker, Hero of Legend, arrived to save the day, and all I could see was how much of his father was in him. And not in a good way. Yes, he was mowing down unfeeling deathbots, not hapless freedom fighters, but the sheer ease with which he did, crushing the last unstoppable killing machine into scrap without even raising his blade, gave his power a frightening edge. He strikes fear even in hardened villains like Gideon and Fennec Shand.

But while Luke in action may have finally brought his Legends depiction to life, his interactions with the other characters showed how far he’s already down the path towards the sequel trilogy.

To understand what I mean and what I believe Favreau and Filoni are doing in this episode and this season, we must compare Luke to the other Jedi in the show. A woman who, in fact, is no longer a Jedi.

She tried to tell you, Din.

Ahsoka Tano is one of the few characters with hype and fan devotion approaching Luke’s. Over her years in the ‘Clone Wars’ and ‘Rebels’ shows and now here in ‘The Mandalorian,’ growing from Anakin’s padawan to a master following her own path, she has become one of the most beloved characters in the franchise. I myself am a huge fan, she is my favorite character after Vader, and though I might have a few nitpicks with her depiction in Chapter 13, I feel it successfully conveyed the heart of her character, especially now in comparison with Luke’s portrayal.

Ahsoka is the first force user Din finds in his quest to unite Grogu with the Jedi. Upon meeting this odd couple, she takes the time to learn Grogu’s story, observe his and Din’s behavior toward each other, and get a full measure of how deeply they are bonded.

Taking stock of all this, she refuses to train Grogu.

There was some confusion surrounding Ahsoka’s reasoning, specifically her warnings about attachments and Jedi. While they were clearly informed by Anakin’s fall, weren’t these views exactly the sort of ideology that Ahsoka deliberately stepped away from in ‘The Clone Wars’? But she doesn’t advocate for avoiding attachments. The opposite, in fact. Ahsoka tells Din to let Grogu’s abilities fade and to focus on their relationship. She tells them to embrace attachment at the expense of power, because the former is what’s actually important and the latter so often brings tragedy.

Meanwhile, Luke swept in with all the majesty afforded to a Main Character, saw a man experiencing every emotion at once at the prospect of parting ways with the child clinging to his leg, and said, “Come, little one.”

Din and Grogu’s bond was so apparent to everyone that their reputation as an inseparable pair preceded them. All Din needed to do to convince a crack team of ruthless killers to attack an Imperial cruiser was say, “They have the kid.” It’s obviously the first thing Ahsoka noticed when the duo found her. Even Moff Gideon remarks on how visible their bond is. The only person who apparently didn’t see it, but instead merely observed it, was the benevolent, legendary Jedi Master.

This is where we see the seeds of sequel trilogy Luke. Whatever certain sections of the fandom like to claim, ‘The Last Jedi’ did not portray Luke as a bad person, but rather a deeply good man who, despite trying his best, had seen his absolute worst nightmare unfold in front of him, and it was partly his fault. The character beat that has been, needless to say, contentious in the never-ending keyboard wars is that the reason Luke failed was because, partly blinded by his own hubris, he came to view Ben Solo as his apprentice, as the heir to his legacy, and ultimately as a threat, more than as his nephew.

In the final moments of ‘The Mandalorian,’ we can already see that attitude informing Luke’s actions. He is in full Legend mode, completely assured of the righteousness of his grand plans for the galaxy, and now presented with a near literal opportunity to carry on Yoda’s legacy. But as he takes that opportunity physically in hand, he fails to heed the words of his master: “All his life has he looked away. To the future. To the horizon. Never, his mind, on where he was, on what he was doing.”

Luke doesn’t even stop to consider that the emotional state of the man he’s taking this child from is clearly in greater ruin than the platoon of droids he just dismantled. Even as the sound effect of Vader’s helmet accompanies Din removing his own to look teary-eyed on his adopted son, Luke seems to have forgotten that the reason he was able to “redeem” his father was because of their familial bond, that he was willing to sacrifice his own training for his love for his friends. The Jedi’s unhealthy aversion to attachment and emotion, and their long history of essentially child abduction, were supposed to be the aspects of the Order he would “reform.” Yet here’s Luke, taking a child away from a parent in all but name, in order to whisk him off to A Greater Calling. The echoes of Qui-Gon Jin leading a young Anakin away from his mother only add to the foreboding nature of Ahsoka’s warnings. True, Grogu went willingly, but so did Anakin, and the show already teased Grogu using the Dark Side multiple times.

Ahsoka was wise enough to look past Din’s insistence on the child’s training to see what the two needed emotionally; Luke was not. Between his superhuman feats, sparse dialogue and uncanny valley face, he seemed incredibly impersonal. Din and Grogu are the only people whose presence he even acknowledges, and Luke doesn’t even tell them his name. No words about all the droids he just destroyed, the piles of dead stormtroopers, the Imperial Moff on the floor, the cruiser they’re standing in, the return of the Empire, who the hell anyone in front of him is, or if and where Din could see Grogu again. Luke is just here to add another fine addition to his collection.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room.

Does Ben Solo kill Baby Yoda?

While Ahsoka chose not to train Grogu because of the destruction of her Order, Luke so blithely and confidently takes Grogu into his fold because he has yet to witness the destruction of his. His actions here stand in stark contrast both to Ahsoka’s and to his own future reaction to Rey showing up on Ahch-To. Grogu leaving in the arms of Luke and R2 should be a cause for relief, an assurance that he is in good hands, finally safe from danger. All I could see was the image of those same two characters looking out at the wreckage of Luke’s school, the bodies of his students strewn around him. “I will give my life to protect the child,” Luke tells Din. “But he will not be safe until he masters his abilities.” Both statements may prove false.

I fear we’re in for some disturbing fan art between now and Season 3.

There’s no way this was accidental. The writing in the finale in particular is too clever for that, and it’s impossible that Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni of all people are unaware of Episode VIII, its backstory and its infamous controversies. Indeed, the framing and use of Luke in his scant screen time seems to hint at this dubious future he portends. Here was the last true Jedi, saving the team in a way that specifically evoked his father at his worst. He brings an end to Din’s honor-bound quest yet may be taking Grogu to his doom, and like the Jedi of old, leaves behind a devastated parent. While watching, I thought of how in an early version of ‘Return of the Jedi,’ Luke fell to the Dark Side, as he also did in the old comics, and part of me thought, “from a certain point of view, this is Dark Side Luke.” Becoming a legend both canonically and, with CGI, literally depersonalizes Luke. His appearance here was exactly what so many fans clamored for, but it also demonstrated the entire point of ‘The Last Jedi,’ the movie they specifically bemoan.

Whatever Grogu’s fate, in my opinion their separation doesn’t bode well for Din. Letting go and supporting the choices one’s child makes even if it takes them away from you is a healthy crucible most parents experience, but this is too early in the development of their relationship. Din steadfastly viewed Grogu as his mission even as he increasingly treated him as his son. He was just starting to embrace that impulse more overtly in the last half of this season, calling Grogu “my only priority” that “means more to me than you will ever know.” Ahsoka literally tells him, “You’re like a father to him.” And Din Djarin racked up quite the body count moving heaven and earth to protect and ultimately rescue his son. Now, just as they’re reunited, poised to finally consciously view each other as family, they have to say goodbye, possibly forever. If Grogu had stayed, I’d have faith that Din could become healthier, walk a better path, and start to unlearn the indoctrination he sustained at the hands of what was basically a cult. Maybe he still can, and the experience will make Din stronger, but as it stands I have a tough time seeing how this doesn’t leave him in a dark place, probably darker than the rough parts of his past we’ve heard referenced.

A big motivation for Din becoming a Mandalorian in the first place was that it gave him the power to destroy the sort of droids that killed his parents. Here were droids he was powerless to defeat, utterly annihilated by an emotionally aloof superhuman who left with his son willingly in tow. There’s something humiliating in that. Din had finally completed his task, and he could clearly only think of so much lost time. If only he had settled down with that widow on Sorgan; if only he had taken Ahsoka’s advice (so much pain and turmoil in Star Wars could have been avoided if more people listened to Ahsoka Tano). As Luke walks away, you can almost see Din pleading with Grogu, “Don’t leave me here, with them.” He is left surrounded by, as Gideon put it, “murderous savages” who killed everyone onboard. Bo-Katan is now a possible enemy, and as soon as this job was done Fennec helped Boba take over a cartel. Even Cara, supposedly the “best” of them as a former Rebel and now marshal, has proven she’s willing to kill a lot of people for the right reasons.

And Din is their peer. The show has never shied away from reminding us that Din is a cold-blooded killer, the type of man who can leave entire buildings full of corpses and assemble a whole team of people like him for the right job. And yet, would Grogu be safer in the care of this murderer than with Luke’s ultimately doomed new Order?

I think Grogu was Din’s second chance, his opportunity to step away from being a killer to try to be a person. As he finds himself without a ship, without a mission or purpose, his code broken, and the unwilling heir to the throne of Mandalore, I have to wonder if Din realizes that he never actually wanted to be a Mandalorian. He wanted a family.

Does this look like a man finding resolution?

Din wouldn’t have been pushed to this point if he hadn’t met Ahsoka and especially Luke. Their respective appearances are in interesting conversation with each other, canonically consistent in their characterization, and yes, fan service, but they also directly inform Din and Grogu’s growth and help illuminate arguably the central theme of the show. Across two seasons, we’ve watched a traumatized, faceless loner slowly relearn how to form deep connections and symbolically let down his emotional barriers, underlining the importance of love and relationships in maintaining our humanity. Given how treatment of attachments was the lynchpin of the Jedi Order’s undoing, it makes thematic sense for a character on this particular journey to interact with the last remaining vestiges of that institution, the two direct inheritors of Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin’s legacies, each drawing diametrically opposed conclusions from the same discovery. Ahsoka is now alone and, after careful consideration, refuses to take on an apprentice, explicitly stating that she sees preserving Grogu’s bond with Din as more important than mastering his powers. Luke is setting himself to rebuilding the entire Order and clearly considers Grogu mastering his powers to be more important than preserving his bond with Din as he doesn’t even think twice about severing it. The specters of her past and his future hang over both of their decisions, and it’s surprising that the actions of the supposed hero of the entire franchise, at the end of an ostensible rescue, threaten such dire consequences.

All of this makes for entertaining drama, of course. Especially for a cliffhanger finale, it’s much more tantalizing to ask, “What will Mando do now without Baby Yoda? Will Baby Yoda die with the rest of Luke’s students? Was Luke taking Baby Yoda really a good thing?” than to say, “Well it was kinda sad, but it was best for everyone.” The way the episode ended ambiguously on a shot of the elevator door closing reminded me of ‘Blade Runner,’ as well as ‘The Empire Strikes Back,’ my favorite ending of the original trilogy. Leaving your audience speculating and wanting more is more interesting than a happy ending to me, and the best way to create drama for your characters is to throw them into their worst-case scenario, not the path we’d always want for them. These unexpectedly darker, murkier questions Luke’s appearance introduces make me more willing to accept and enjoy it, even if it was exactly the turn of events I specifically did not want in this show. Maybe I’m way off the mark and totally misreading this finale; maybe the limitations of the CGI are leading me to overstate my case regarding Luke’s characterization; but the use of lore this season has been so deliberate that I don’t think I am.

If Favreau and Filoni had just given us the “badass” Legends Luke with nothing more than a hollow wink and a John Williams refrain to appease fans, I’d be disappointed. But I think they gave us something more complex. In fact, all my reasons for not wanting Luke to appear in this show seem to be exactly why he did.

A Main Character showed up, and the fandom finally got its legend. Which might be the worst thing that could have happened to Grogu and Din Djarin.