I’m so fascinated by Luke’s arc in The Last Jedi and the negative response to it because the latter reveals so much about the former.
Luke’s true failure is not that he tried to kill his nephew. Because he didn’t. Igniting his saber over Ben “and for the briefest of moments” believing that it’s possible for him to save those he loves from destruction is a moment of weakness, and Luke comes breathtakingly close to falling into the darkness of killing a defenseless boy who up to this point has done nothing wrong. But he doesn’t fall. The moment passes and he doesn’t kill him. He conquers the temptation because he understands the horror of that potential action and wants no part of it. Everyone is right. Luke Skywalker would never and could never kill his nephew. And he doesn’t!! do it!!
Now the tragedy of this (and honestly the reason that so many people interpret this moment as Luke Skywalker’s actual Fall) is that the timing of Luke’s moment of weakness, and even more pertinently the timing of the moment he actually overcomes the temptation of the dark side like the good man that he still is, literally could not have been worse. Ben wakes up, sees his uncle looming over him, (completely understandably) assumes the worst, and responds instantly with violence and passion. The tragedy isn’t that Luke tried to kill his nephew; it’s that his nephew thought he did. The results of this moment for Ben- though founded on an incomplete and skewed understanding of the situation- are the same as if that understanding had been the whole truth. The trauma is as real and and as damaging, the chain of events set in motion by this moment as catastrophically heartbreaking as if Luke really did try to kill his student, his nephew, while he was literally defenseless and sleeping.
But the damage done to Ben Solo by this moment doesn’t change the fact that this moment isn’t actually Luke’s true failure. Luke’s actual fall is that he is so horrified by how close he came to killing his nephew, so appalled by how precariously he teetered right on the edge of the darkness he thought he’d conquered that he retreats, shuts down, shuts himself off from the force, and falls into self-doubt so complete it practically is despair. It is despair. That is Luke Skywalker’s fall- not the fact that he was so horrified by a vision of personal destruction and loss that violence and anger gripped him and urged him to fight back but then ultimately had the strength and the virtue to pull himself back from the edge of that darkness, but the fact that he never allowed that falling into darkness is human. His fall is believing that a moment of darkness that he didn’t and ultimately never intended to act on was as bad as actually committing the crime itself, that it was a fall and corresponding chain of events for which he was wholly responsible. Luke tries to take on responsibility and guilt that isn’t his, and because he tries to do that he cannot bear the weight of it. It is not his guilt to carry and so of course he cannot bear it. He gives up and retreats. He believes he is the monster that he never actually was.
And the thing that kills me about this whole thing and that I think is brilliant and heartbreaking and frustrating all at once is that the response from (a fairly loud subsection of) the audience to Luke’s arc demonstrates that it is completely reasonable and in character for Luke to fall into this trap of hating himself and doubting himself on the most fundamental level. It is the very fact that so many readings of this movie took Luke’s lightsaber moment with Ben as his tragic flaw- and loudly proclaimed it was out of character because Luke would never!!- that reveals exactly why Luke actually fell into such despair and self-doubt. Luke and the audience make the same mistake. Luke knows how “out of character” this moment of darkness was, so out of character that he cannot even bring himself to believe that he didn’t actually do it (even though he didn’t actually do it!). A man who kills his nephew in his sleep is so far from the man Luke Skywalker believed himself to be that the horror of coming so close to becoming that man rocked him to his very foundation. The reaction to Luke’s arc for many star wars fans was the impassioned conviction that it had ruined Luke’s character because it ignored and betrayed the very thing that Luke Skywalker would never do. But the arc doesn’t ignore this fact; it is built on it. It rests solidly on the foundation of what Luke would never do and it is that very reality which catapults Luke into his actual and tragic failure in this movie- the failure to forgive and trust himself for experiencing- and briefly but not ultimately giving into true and powerful temptation.
There is a reason that Luke’s reintegration with the Force and with his family, the restoration of his self-confidence and his hope takes the entire movie. Every cry that Rian Johnson committed character assassination and ruined countless childhoods brilliantly illuminates why. If large sections of the audience cannot watch Luke Skywalker contemplate a wicked act for “the briefest of moments” without being overcome with a horror so strong it doesn’t even let them see the moment where the darkness passes and the light and goodness triumph, why would the man himself be able to? Why would his confrontation with the darkness and the knowledge that he was a flicker away from falling into the abyss- coupled with the fact that he had to watch the consequences of a crime he did not commit play out anyway- not shake him to his core and destroy him so completely that he can’t help but convince himself that he did in fact do the thing he would never do? For every cry of “Luke Skywalker would never!” Luke himself had to face that same reality and when he realized that he almost did the thing he would never do, of course he broke down and wondered “If Luke Skywalker would never, then who am I now? Because I almost did.”
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themusechronicles 