In the latest issue of Marvel's Star Wars, Luke Skywalker goes on an Odyssey to discover more Jedi knowledge, echoing his later self-imposed exile.
Warning: contains spoilers for Star Wars #19!
Prior to the events of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Luke Skywalker vanished from the galaxy in a time of need, taking up residence on Ahch-To, a place of immense significance to the Jedi. It was a move many fans decried as totally out of character, but the upcoming Star Wars #19 argues that Luke's nomadic tendencies began far earlier. More than just serving as a prelude to the events of The Force Awakens, this issue continues the mission of the Star Wars comic series crafted by Marvel, which is to follow the main characters of the original trilogy during the events that took place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
Previous issues of Star Wars have done an excellent job of setting up the building blocks for how Luke Skywalker becomes a Jedi Master in the middle of the original trilogy. The series has forced Luke to grow into the man he shows up as in Return, thanks to a deadly TIE encounter with Darth Vader, discovering his yellow lightsaber, and even perfecting new techniques like lightsaber deflection. In just nineteen issues, Luke Skywalker's transformation from naive farm boy to skilled Jedi Master is on its way to completion.
Releasing on December 8, 2021, Charles Soule and Marco Castiello's Star Wars #19 (with cover art by Carlo Pagulayan) continues to see Luke Skywalker expand his Force horizons and hunt down new lessons from the Jedi. A preview from StarWars.com shows Luke and R2-D2 traveling from planet to planet, looking for some vestige of the Jedi after realizing he's still not ready to face Darth Vader. Luke's lonesome journey to sites of Jedi importance, accompanied only by R2-D2, foreshadows his later exile. On this journey, Luke searches for more insight into the Jedi so he can play his part in saving the galaxy, not knowing that later in his life - when he knows more about the Jedi than anyone alive - he'll once again set out to a Jedi world with R2-D2, this time to retreat from his mistakes.
Marvel's Star Wars series is doing an amazing job of establishing how Luke became both the Jedi fans see in Return of the Jedi and the exhausted exile they met in The Force Awakens. Readers will recall how in Star Wars #15 by Charles Soule, Ramon Rosanas, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Clayton Cowles, Luke was infuriated when young rebel pilot Mart Mattin swooped in and took a clean shot against a Star Destroyer to destroy it once and for all. Entitled, Luke yelled, "That was my shot, Mattin!" despite having taken his shot moments earlier and missed. It's a small moment, but one that alludes to the sort of arrogance and, in some regards, hero complex that lead to his failures with Kylo Ren and later years on Ahch-To. It's commendable that the series isn't just bridging two movies, but accepting Luke's characterization across the entire franchise.
Star Wars has always been a franchise laced through with themes of destiny, circularity, and dramatic irony. Everything that happens in the lore's past and present seems to find a way to affect the future. This series has refused to neglect those themes, often hinting at key moments that will happen in the sequel trilogy as often as it sets the stage for Return of the Jedi. Readers will see exactly how Marvel's Star Wars affects Luke Skywalker's future on December 8.
Source: StarWars.com
