Everything after this paragraph will be dealing with a persistent “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” casting rumor about Domhnall Gleeson. Abandon all hope of remaining spoiler-free, ye who enter here. Turn back now.
.
.
.
Last chance.
.
.
.
Okay. Back in the beginning of February, Making Star Wars heard that Domhnall Gleeson has been cast as Luke Skywalker”s son. Not only that, but the young Skywalker is allegedly an Imperial Officer who turned his cloak over sketchy decisions made by the Rebel Alliance.
At first, I didn”t think much of this revelation. While dismissed to the realm of “Legends,” the Expanded Universe had Luke shacking up with Mara Jade for years. This coupling produced at least one kid, Ben Skywalker. So when this rumor popped up, it made sense that Disney and Abrams would repurpose the character for their own use. The Imperial Officer bit is a twist, but if true it makes for good storytelling. If anything, it just made me hopeful that SOME version of Mara Jade might be salvaged from the wreckage of the EU.
Then this article reminded me not everyone comes into Star Wars armed with decades worth of lore. A lot of fans are going off the films alone. Without the scaffolding of the Expanded Universe, Luke having a kid might seem like a slap in the face to the new Jedi Order. After all, Jedi don”t have relationships for a reason. Luke”s own father fell in love and look where it got him: legless in a pit of lava, succumbing completely to the Dark Side.
But Luke doesn”t know that.
If we”re examining life choices purely within the confines of the Star Wars films, Luke knows very little about the circumstances of his father”s death and even less about the Jedi code of conduct. Ghost Obi-Wan was exceptionally vague during “The Empire Strikes Back,” saying only that Vader succumbed to the Dark Side. Nothing about falling in love with Padme, or devotion to family* leading to cracks in Anakin”s armor that Palpatine pried open. Hell, Luke and Leia aren”t even definitively told their mother is dead.
*I will argue to the death that Anakin was already predisposed to violence and being in a relationship had no bearing on him becoming Sith. If Palpatine couldn”t have manipulated Anakin with promises of ‘keeping Padme safe,” he”d have done with ‘get vengeance on Padme for rejecting you”.
Luke is also operating (at least at first) without knowing all the rules Jedi lived by. At some point between Episodes VI and VII, he could”ve found a holocron filled with the ancient ways. Not that they would matter. In the war-torn aftermath of Jedi genoicide, could Skywalker afford to reject Force-Sensitives that weren”t toddlers? There”s no network of recruiters anymore, the rules have to change. You could effectively argue the Jedi”s rigid conduct rules turned more Padawans to the Dark Side than any Sith ever did.
So without any of this information, Luke can”t make an objective decision to live as a space monk to avoid his father”s fate. If anything, he seems eager to reclaim his family legacy. “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” is a declaration of pride. The kind of pride that leads to procreation in an attempt to correct the mistakes of past generations.
If the rumor about Gleeson is true, it would seem said attempt goes about as well as any parent trying to grant their idea of the perfect childhood to their own kids.