Mark Hamill isn’t done talking about The Last Jedi, and frankly, neither are we.
It’s been almost eight years since Rian Johnson’s Jedi-deconstructionist fever dream split the Star Wars fandom in half like a lightsaber through a Snoke torso, and at this point, the revisionism is exhausting. People either treat it like high art or a cinematic war crime, but the one person who’s always kept it real? Hamill. The man was Luke Skywalker—he lived it, breathed it, watched it die on Ahch-To in a cloud of Force ghost vapor—and now he’s out here admitting what many of us suspected all along: he had to invent his own backstory just to emotionally survive playing that version of the character.
According to Hamill, his Luke didn’t just run away after failing Ben Solo. No, in his mind, Luke fell in love. Left the Jedi. Had a kid. Lost that kid in a freak lightsaber accident. Then lost his wife. Then broke apart so completely that exile wasn’t a choice—it was the only option. That was the version of Luke Mark used to justify the hollowed-out man we got in The Last Jedi. The problem is, that story isn’t in the movie. Not even hinted at. The actual film gives you Force texts, some space nuns, and green milk. That’s the emotional range.
And yeah, yeah—”death of the author” and all that. But at some point, when the actor playing your central character has to mentally retcon the script just to get through the performance? That’s not subtext. That’s a cry for help.
You can go back and watch the press tour footage if you need receipts. Hamill did everything short of saying “this ain’t it” on live TV. He called him “Jake Skywalker.” He looked visibly uncomfortable at the premiere. And we all gaslit ourselves into thinking he was just tired, or trolling, or being cheeky because, hey, it’s Mark Hamill—he’s a joker. Except now, years later, it’s obvious he meant it. And he’s still carrying that weight.
Look, I’m not here to re-litigate the sequel trilogy like it’s 2018 Twitter all over again. We’ve all moved on. Rian’s off making Knives Out sequels and Peacock mysteries, and to his credit, those are bangers. But the shadow of The Last Jedi still looms large because it never got resolved. Rise of Skywalker tried to reverse-engineer the backlash into fan service slop. Nobody won. What we’re left with is a trilogy that feels like two directors trying to rewrite each other in real time, and a Luke Skywalker that got so thoroughly dismantled that the actor had to build an imaginary family just to justify showing up on set.
And that’s the real gut punch. Hamill clearly wanted something more for Luke. You can feel it in every word he’s said since 2017. He wanted something closer to Heir to the Empire. Maybe even a touch of Mara Jade. Maybe not in name, but in spirit—a Jedi with a past. A Jedi with pain. A Jedi who built something before he lost it all. That’s a version of Luke that has gravity. That has emotional stakes. What we got instead was a sad wizard who thought the best way to handle evil was to ghost the galaxy and hope the next girl figured it out.
Don’t get me wrong: The Last Jedi is the best-directed movie of the sequel trilogy by a mile. The throne room scene? Incredible. That Holdo lightspeed shot? Burned into the collective retina of a generation (should’ve been Admiral Ackbar, but that’s an argument for another time). The score? John Williams never phones it in. But direction isn’t the problem. The problem is foundation. You can’t build a legacy sequel on the salt flats of Crait and expect it to hold. Especially not when your lead actor is out here writing fanfiction in his head just to make it make sense.
Hamill’s confession isn’t just about Luke. It’s about what happens when a franchise becomes so self-conscious, so desperate to be “subversive,” that it loses track of its own emotional DNA. You want to challenge a myth? Fine. But at least let it die with dignity, not as some crabby hermit punchline who ghost-fades off a rock.
So no, this isn’t a hit piece on The Last Jedi. It’s not even about the movie anymore. It’s about the moment Mark Hamill finally admitted that what we all felt back then was real. That he had doubts. That he didn’t see himself in the version of Luke they gave him. And if he didn’t see it—why the hell were we expected to?
Hollywood After Dark 