Star Wars: Mark Hamill Reveals What Would Have Happened to Luke if He Never Became a Jedi

In the decades since the franchise launched in 1977, Star Wars fans have had countless discussions about alternate avenues that its characters might have explored if they hadn’t had the fateful encounters seen in the film, with even Mark Hamill having similar speculation about the saga, as he recently noted that he believes Luke Skywalker might have become a teacher if he never had a run-in with C-3PO and R2-D2 on his uncle’s moisture farm. In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, audiences caught a glimpse of Luke attempting to be a teacher, but having distanced himself from the Force at that point, his attitude was a lot different than it would have been had he never ventured to explore the Jedi ways.

When a fan on Twitter directly asked Hamill what he thought Luke’s profession might have been if not a Jedi, the actor replied, “I’d like to think he would have been a teacher.”

Having spent 40 years with the character, it would make sense that Hamill had pondered other fates for the hero, even if there wasn’t a storyline in which such trajectories were explored.

Fans got their first look at Luke since the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi at the end of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but we didn’t learn the full extent of his backstory until The Last Jedi. Even then, we only gleaned small pieces of information about his backstory, with Hamill himself having come up with his own stories to help motivate his performance.

“He left the Jedi to raise this young child and marry this woman,” Hamill revealed to Entertainment Weekly about what caused him to leave the Jedi behind. “And the child got hold of a lightsaber and accidentally killed himself.”

He added, “It’s nothing to do with the story, but when I think about gun violence and you read these tragic stories of kids getting hold of their parents’ guns and killing a sibling or themselves, I mean, I had to go to really dark places to get where Luke needed to be for this story.”

As opposed to other characters from the Skywalker Saga whose journeys have been explored in various timelines, it’s unlikely we’ll get spinoff adventures focusing on the character, given how much prominence he had in the original trilogy.

What do you think of Hamill’s thoughts on the matter? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!