Luke and the Jedi (Spoilers)

[Mak Manto]

I've seen a lot of discussion not on just this board but from many people on Luke leaving everyone and disappearing to an unknown world after Kylo Ren destroyed his new Jedi Order, blaming himself for what had happened.

I get the fact that everyone thinks it's a cop out, especially when Obi-Wan and Yoda faced the same thing and continued on so that they could prepare for the day for Anakin's children to be trained and take down the Emperor and Vader.

However, Luke's emotional state is not that unusual...

Luke was by himself, a Jedi with the weight of an entire Galaxy on his shoulders, knowing he was fully responsible of bringing back the Jedi again and only to see it burn to the ground from his apprentice, just as Obi-Wan experienced with his apprentice.

Though, Luke is a person first and foremost. What had happened would've broken most people. Years before this film came out, Mak was RPed the same way. A Jedi who survived Order 66 and the Purge, to see his mentors and apprentices and friends and fellow Jedi killed all around him, to only fall into a deep depression, knowing that everything you tried to do failed, and that you, perhaps, were the last of your kind.

It's a bleak and distressing view one would have to live with.

 

[Jsc]

I don't tend to favor the 'Luke is a wuss' idea. I tend to look at all the unknown factors. Like Kylo, The Knights of Ren, The Republic, and Snoke.

Kylo

• Student at the Academy. Known Skywalker. Son of Han and Leia. Seduced by Snoke. Leader of the Knights of Ren. Strong enough to kill everybody at the Academy. Woo. That's a doozy.

Knights of Ren

• Seemed like a few of them. Lead by Kylo. Smashed an Academy. Woo. I wouldn't want to fight them either. Especially since we have idea of their potential right now.

New Republic

• In the EU the New Republic was always Luke's friend. But when he disappears, only Leia goes looking for him. I'll bet the New Republic is pretty standoffish about Jedi too. Especially after the Prequels.

Snoke

• Very strong, very vulnerable. And almost completely unknown. I wouldn't blame Luke for not wanting to fight this shadow person in a shadow location either.

So yeah. In closing, I feel it is really easy to say 'Luke is a wuss'. But the more you look at everything we don't know? It is very hard to see how Luke made his decision to move into exile. I don't think we have enough evidence to convict Luke either way. Until we know all of the reasons why he made his decision? It's best to give him the benefit of the doubt. He might have been making the right decision after all.

 

[Darth Ferus]

In Star Wars rebels you meet a Jedi who survived the purge. And he wasn't a Jedi anymore. He had forsaken the path because of the stress and horrors he saw when his own master was shot down by clone troopers. He, like Luke, fell into a depression. He did continue to fight the empire though, but never as a Jedi (at least at first.)

I'd imagine watching your Nephew kill everyone you brought together trying to recreate an order of old would break anyone.

 

[Sabena Shai]

There's also the chance that Luke hadn't really won the battle against the dark side - within himself, that is.

A major element of the new trilogy - going off the novel and comments from crew members - is that the light and dark sides aren't mutually exclusive. "They're like two sides to a coin" is the phrase I most commonly hear from Episode VII crew members. And one person could show elements of both.

Luke definitely flirted with the dark side in the Original Trilogy. While it's suggested he was triumphant against it in the end, Yoda did say in Episode V that if Luke stopped his training early and takes the "quick and easy" path like Vader, he would become "an agent of evil." Yoda even suggests that going down the path of the dark side permanently subjects someone to it for the rest of their life.

Going off of the above, I wouldn't be surprised if Episode VIII reveals that Luke blames himself for Kylo's fall rather than Snoke - that he's too much like his father and too close to the dark side to be the leader of a new generation of Jedi. This feeling would only be reinforced by a concrete example of him being unable to prevent one of his students from falling to the dark side.

Hell, Luke might agree with what (novel) Snoke said in that one that's experienced both the light and dark side has greater potential than someone exposed to just one side. So, maybe he pushed his students through a messy trial that only helped in Kylo's fall.

 

[Mak Manto]

In the case of what Yoda said to Luke, about the dark path being a permanent one, I think Yoda and Obi-Wan were both wrong. In Return of the Jedi, both Yoda and Obi-Wan tell Luke that Vader is not able to be redeemed, that he has to stopped at any cost, along with the Emperor, something Luke feels that is not right, that there's still good in his father deep down.

In the end, Luke was right. He was able to redeem Anakin, and it illustrates the point, at least to me, that even the wisest and strongest Force users know all ends. Palpatine thought he was going to live forever and Yoda and Obi-Wan thought Vader was unredeemable.