This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker finally meets his maker. Or so it seems. What? We said there were spoilers. So how does it happen? Well, Luke over-exerts himself while projecting his image onto the planet Crait. His plan is to distract Kylo Ren in an effort to help Rey and her fellow band of Resistance fighters escape. Cut to Luke Skywalker’s physical form — which never left the island of Ahch-To — and we see his cape crumple to the rock beneath him as his earthly body dissipates.
A tweet to the Star Wars actor suggesting Luke’s mechanical hand would have clanked down on the rock if this meant he’d died caused Hamill to speculate that, instead, Skywalker actually teleported to a “planet of nudists”. While that’s something every Star Wars fan didn’t know they needed to see, Hamill expanded on a more plausible spin-off idea when chatting to FANDOM recently.
A Religious Leader
“There’s such an interesting period that they skipped over where he had a Jedi academy,” says Hamill. “Because you figure at the end of the last trilogy, what’s next for him?”
The Last Jedi continues straight on after the conclusion of The Force Awakens, which reintroduced Luke to the saga as a hermit living on a remote island. It picks up around 30 years after we last saw Luke reuniting with his father, Obi-Wan and Yoda in the form of Force ghosts at the end of Return of the Jedi.
For Hamill, the broad question of what’s next for Luke begets a series of more specific, probing questions that could be explored in a spin-off centering on this period of the character’s history.
“Does he become like the Pope of the Jedi religion? Is there anybody bigger?” he asks. “Maybe there is. Maybe he has to go and study in a monastery.”
Back to Tatooine
While we learned snippets about this interim period from the two films in the new sequel trilogy, there’s still plenty that hasn’t been broached that Hamill would like to see expanded upon.
“That’s the thing, George [Lucas] created a canvas that is so large, the possibilities are endless,” says Hamill. “I’d like [a spin-off] to focus on Luke helping younger people because they’re our future and you’d like to think that the best things, the positive things, that you learn from Star Wars are aspects like doing what’s right for the greater good, rather than thinking about what helps you. The selflessness involved, I like that. And I’d like to think that it has a positive influence on kids.”
Hamill thinks it would be difficult, though not impossible, to create another adventure for Luke on his home planet of Tatooine, with Luke around the same age as when we meet him in A New Hope.
“People say: ‘Do you think there could be a young Luke Skywalker Movie? I say: ‘There’s already been one. It’s called Star Wars,’” says Hamill. “Because [Luke] was a teenager. The whole point of the first one was he was bored silly on his planet so unless they were able to do a story where they cut to other stories and there’s things going on on his planet that he doesn’t know about, I don’t know how you’d really involve him without it reflecting in the first time you saw him. But, like I say, there’s so many possibilities and so many great writers out there, I’m sure they’ll come up with something.”
Young Luke Frontrunners
So who could play a younger Luke? Hamill ruminates on the qualities of both Bucky Barnes actor Sebastian Stan and young Room and Wonder star Jacob Tremblay.
“People say: ‘Oh, [Sebastian Stan] looks just like you, he looks like your son,’ and I think he’s said he’d love to play [Luke]. I hate to put my thumb on the scales and say he’s got my stamp of approval because I think he’s a wonderful actor, he could probably do anything, but I don’t want to prevent somebody who doesn’t have the notoriety of Sebastian to have his shot at it,” he says.
“I also met Jacob Tremblay at The Book of Henry [premiere], and he’s a wonderful little boy and a big Star Wars fan. I just thought he had such composure beyond his years in his little suit. But it depends on what age you want to meet Luke. Because I guess Jacob is only 10 or 11, in that range. So I don’t know.”
He adds, “I wouldn’t presume to know. There’s probably unknowns. I certainly was unknown when I got to play him.”
First things first, though. Let’s just hope we’ll see more from Mark Hamill in the role when Episode IX hits screens next year.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the US on March 27 and available via Digital Download now. In the UK you can get your hands on the film on all formats from April 9.