Page 54 - Star Wars Insider #177

LUKE SKYWALKER
08 07 06

Luke confronts Man in Black Rey of Light
Vader AT BESPIN

When Luke introduces himself in
Return of the Jedi, he does so as a
holographic message to Jabba the Hutt,
declaring that he is “Luke Skywalker,
Jedi Knight.” He wears a sleek new
uniform and speaks in a deliberate
fashion, far from the brash kid we saw
in A New Hope. Yet it’s not until we see

him for the first time in the flesh that
the full extent of his change is realized.
Luke strides into Jabba’s palace as
a silhouette dressed all in black. He
dismisses the Gamorrean guards
with a wave of his hand and calmly
convinces Jabba’s majordomo to give
him an audience with the crime lord. If Return of the Jedi introduces
Luke doesn’t tremble in fear before the Luke Skywalker as a changed
slimy Hutt. When he pulls back the man, The Force Awakens
Luke’s first face-to-face cinematic hood of his cloak, Luke reveals a face introduces him as having

confrontation with Vader has so that is slightly older, wiser, and almost changed again, in a scene that
much power because it’s both a serene—it is the face of a man who has is perhaps the antithesis of
physical and a mental duel, and accepted the mantle of a Jedi. his debut as a Jedi Knight in
one that reveals much about both Jabba’s palace. When Rey finds

the original trilogy’s hero and its Luke at the end of the film, he

key villain. “The Force is with you is similarly cowled in a cloak,
young Skywalker, but you are not a though underneath he wears
Jedi yet,” Vader announces before dirty white garb in place of
languidly igniting his lightsaber. black. As he pulls back the hood,
The two spar, but as the fight we see the skin graft is gone

progresses, it becomes clear that from his artificial hand, showing
Luke’s nemesis has little intention metal fingers, joints, and wrist

of killing him. Instead, after plates. The face that’s revealed is
maiming him, Vader gets inside also decades older than before,
Luke’s head. Suddenly, the Dark coupled with a thin, graying
Lord is talking in a way that we’ve beard and a mane of shaggy hair.
never heard before; persuasively This Luke is not the clean, sleek
appealing to Luke to join him, even knight of his youth; now he
suggesting that the pair could work is a worn and weathered older
together for peace. Finally, with just man, a solitary druid on the
four words, he changes everything. windswept island, Ahch-To. The
“I am your father.” Luke is horrifi ed film never reveals exactly what

by the revelation, but instinctively happened to him and neither
understands its truth. Rather than does he utter a single word, but
try to save his own life, however, the sullen, confused look he
Luke stands firm, choosing to leap gives the newcomer Rey is all

towards, he believes, certain death, we need to know that he has
rather than choose the dark side. suffered—and he has changed.

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