Mark Hamill Reveals George Lucas’s Original Plans For Luke
You’ve all seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi by now, correct? If not, then duck out of here to avoid the spoilers.
Only people who’ve seen the movie are left now? Good. As we all know, Luke Skywalker passed on Jedi-style at the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Cause of death was implied to be strain from a super-extensive Force-powered hologram projection of himself. Or he just felt like kicking off.
During a new interview with IGN, Mark Hamill revealed George Lucas also had plans to show the end of Luke Skywalker — though they would come much later. According to Hamill:
“I happen to know that George didn’t kill Luke until the end of [Episode] 9, after he trained Leia. Which is another thread that was never played upon [in The Last Jedi].”‘
It’s unknown which version of Episode 9 Mark is talking about. Lucas originally wrote an outline for a sequel trilogy while the original trilogy was being filmed — but decided to abandon those ideas and incorporate some plot elements into Return of the Jedi. Later on Lucas changed his mind and started playing with sequel ideas once more, but abandoned his plans again once the bad reviews for the prequels came in.
Finally, Lucas wrote a proposed outline for the sequels as the handover to Disney was taking place. The outline was rejected by the new head of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy, and the studio started developing its own take.
Another thing we didn’t know before was that Luke was supposed to train Leia at one point. There’s a lot revealed in that little blurb of Mark’s.