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When the Force called out a hero
The Last Jedi novelization
Author: Jason Fry
The Force is not here to play games. It has no time for your prophecies of the Chosen One. It doesn’t care if you are the most powerful Jedi that ever Space Wizerd. It doesn’t even give a damn if you shut off your connection to it. Doesn’t matter. The Force will find you, always.
Jason Fry’s novelization of The Last Jedi got the fanbase buzzing by giving us a haunting vision of what could have been in A New Hope. What if Luke Skywalker had watched the hologram of the princess in distress, heard Obi-Wan’s request to join him on this damn fool idealistic crusade, and, instead of going with him to Mos Eisley, had stayed behind and not gotten involved? Big questions that had a big answer in Fry’s prologue.
It was a Star Wars fanatic’s dream. Fry presented this evocative alternate reality in which Luke married his girlfriend Camie, (infamously cut from A New Hope but still in the 1977 novelization), his best friend Biggs had died “somewhere unimaginably far away,” Obi-Wan was discovered by the Empire, and Princess Leia executed. The Empire wins, and all the while Luke stays on Tatooine with his wife. He takes over the moisture farm he was raised on, reaches the quotas for the Empire and pays his water tax to Jabba the Hutt, all the while living his life wondering about that princess and her call for help.
After this came out, Star Wars news media ran wild with the juicy, misleading headlines of Luke Skywalker having a wife (he didn’t) while spending his days in isolation on Ahch-To dreaming about this life that never was. As if it was some wistful daydream of a simpler life. Wrong. All wrong. The Force called him out.
Luke ran away and when we find him at the end of The Force Awakens, he had worked his way back to the start again. He was on a faraway planet, doing mundane chores, and disconnected from the bigger world around him. Except, now, instead of staring at the twin suns and wondering what was out there for him, he was waiting for them to set for good. Luke Skywalker had failed.
Now, why is it good or exciting that Luke Skywalker failed? Why is this a reason to love Star Wars? This is our hero, mind you. Well, it is a reason to love Star Wars because it reminds us that Star Wars has room for this failure. Like us, the grand hero CAN fail, there are layers to this journey, but he can choose to be better. (Remember Luke’s very own lesson to Del Meeko on Pillio.) And this wasn’t just Luke getting that chance to choose again, this was a sharp rebuke. If you had some issues with Luke’s decisions in the last years of his life, then you weren’t alone; the Force did too.
However, the Force couldn’t get to Luke in the traditional way. No Force ghosts, mysterious voices, or dark tree caves. It needed to circumvent the walls he had erected around his heart, so it found him in a dream. It was a warning. A storm was coming, and he was going to be in it. He could get involved or stay out of it as he pleased. The Force wants you to choose and it can’t make that choice for you. As Obi-Wan said to him years ago, “You must do what you feel is right, of course.”
Back then, staying out of it would have meant the deaths of Biggs, Kenobi, and Leia. It would have led to the capture of Artoo and Threepio. Not only would Alderaan have been destroyed but the home worlds of Ackbar and Mon Mothma as well. The Empire would have won. Skywalker would have lived his days out as Luke Lars, a humble moisture farmer, living under the mislabeled peace of the Galactic Empire. The Force was not so subtly showing Luke the potential cost back then as a reminder of what was at stake now. Something—and let’s not forget—someone—Rey—was coming to try and pull him back into the fold.
Luke wasn’t pulled back in easily. He needed every bit of Rey’s presence in his life to challenge his dejected mindset and that makes his final choice in The Last Jedi even that much more effective. The choice Luke makes in the end, that powerful sacrifice of peace and purpose, can be traced directly back to this prologue. That is why it’s to be celebrated. It’s the very foundation on which Luke’s final decision is built and connects to the very core of our knowledge of the Force.
There is a promise we all learn very early on in our Star Wars fandom. The one Obi-Wan communicated to Luke in the Death Star trench run. The Force will be with you, always, whether you want it to be or not. This prologue is the fulfillment of that promise and the realization of its depth. We’ve always looked at that promise from the vantage point of good times, but the Star Wars story isn’t about the finish line of victory. It’s about getting there. Luke Skywalker had failed, and he was done with the Force. But, thankfully, the Force was not done with him.
