I’ve been thinking about it all day, about Luke and his characterization right now in canon and what it is about it that is resonating with me so much, in relation to both works set in the Original Trilogy like this one, and the Sequal Trilogy and between the two, and I think I finally pinned it down?
Leia isn’t the only one of the two of them being written and treated like a survivor of genocide - Luke’s reaction to the Jedi purge - to every single member of the religion he belongs to being hunted down and killed - is very much that of a genocide survivor desperately clinging to that which has been taken from them, doing everything possible to find and preserve not only the evidence that their people once existed - but ensure that one day they can exist once more.
Where Leia is an immediate survivor of genocide - she literally witnessed the destruction of her people take place before her very eyes - Luke is one generation removed from the Purges. He is of the generation that comes after a genocide, the children of those who were impacted, trying to make sense of their history and move forward with the future.
Honestly Luke’s reaction to it all reminds me of how I was so interested in academic topics related to my Judaism. Of how having a parent who lived through the Shoah - having relatives who were murdered due to their Judaism - made me want to cling to and… understand my Judaism in this really particular way that I see reflected in Luke’s canon characterization.
I’ve also been thinking about how the embargo on him showing up in stories set after Endor means we’ve gotten three books now (two of the Aftermath books, and Bloodline) where his presence is mainly felt in the form of Leia thinking about how much she wishes he was there with her, and not traveling across the Galaxy searching for what remaining Jedi knowledge is out there.
Three works where it is made clear that Luke’s entire world becomes restoring the Order, something he throws himself into with boundless bright eyed enthusiasm and hope and aplomb - but canon also tells us that no one at all knows if he was even there when Ben was born! Oh it’s rumored he might have been there as his sister gave birth - but if he was no one saw him there by the time Leia and Han welcomed visitors to come and meet their son.
All three of the works where Luke does appear post Endor - Shattered Empire, Battlefront II, and The Legends of Luke Skywalker - continue that same trend. In all three he is traveling all across the Galaxy to learn more about the Jedi Order. He’s always his wonderful bright shining self, throwing himself into the effort to understand and restore the Jedi of Old with boundless enthusiasm… but it is not hard to imagine how when his new temple got wrecked he himself shattered.
Hell, even the two works most focused on him set during the Original Trilogy, The Weapon of a Jedi and Heir to the Jedi, are both about him going off mission when sent out on a task by the Rebellion, because he wanted to focus on finding out more about the Jedi of Old.
I dunno. I’m going to return to this post tomorrow, after I see The Last Jedi, but there really is something to this characterization that truly resonates with me, and I do think it is an excellent case of using a character’s greatest strengths also as his greatest weaknesses all at the same time. He believes in the Jedi, he has devoted himself to restoring them, he has boundless faith and compassion as he focuses on that task, it is something he has very notably prioritized over all else… so what happens when all that he had been building gets torn down, and now he is the very last Jedi once more.
Anyway all of that was also to say I really appreciate how this comic connects Leia’s pain over the genocide of her people (her memory of her father’s last conversation with her immediately invokes the destruction of Alderaan) to Luke’s need to study the Jedi.
