MariahJade2

on a funnny little note, a Youtube commenter once said on a video of the scene that "these aren't effects, older people actually can just shoot lightning out of their hands at annoying youngsters". lol

so I responded, "it's true! odd how no one talks about it. back in high school, my husband corrected his teacher during class, and after the bell, she caught him in the stairwell and blasted him for a minute! had him hanging on for dear life like Luke!" :D

Later on, my husband was like, "why was I the victim of your anecdote and not you?" hehe

Hi @linjessicalin! Thanks so much for the note and the hilarious anecdote. I'm happy that my tumblr can feed you and others who appreciate how Luke suffers so beautifully. I mean, hey, those amazing writhes and twists and grimaces can um... like with a saxophone and a little candlelight instead of force lightning come off totally different! 😁

Cheers to your husband for appreciating your humour, even as he is the victim of it (hey, putting him in the "zappee" role is the ultimate compliment from a Luke fan!). 🥰

Un dibujo de Luke y Mara Skywalker estilo Art Nouveau que hice el año pasado.

Convinced that still not enough people in this fandom have read the Heir to the Empire trilogy (aka Hat Man's favorite piece of EU media to pull from) because being one of the biggest Mara Jade stans on the planet, the way everybody is Big Braining their way through predictions and analyses right and left and yet has somehow failed to clock what may actually be the most obvious parallel out of all of them is both astounding and also annoying me

Mara Jade

Palpatine steals her from her family at a young age to serve as his personal assassin and manipulates her into being unflinchingly loyal to him. For her whole life she mistakenly believes that he took her in for more altruistic reasons instead of literally kidnapping her to mold her into a human weapon. Despite being interested in her power he also purposely prevents her from ever fully harnessing it to keep her from becoming a threat to him - she is trained only to the point where she can be useful to him without compromising his control of the situation. Thanks to him being a master manipulator, she develops a warped relationship with him in which she sort of sees him as a pseudo-father figure.

Fast-forward to years later, and she finds out that he lied to her and used her and it completely breaks her adherence to the false narrative he created for her. Once she realizes the truth, she abandons her allegiance to him (or the version of him that still lives in her head) and teams up with Luke Skywalker, who not only is her path back to the Light but is also the one empowering her to detach herself from this unhealthy codependent relationship that almost destroyed her. However she is deeply traumatized by this experience, and even a decade on from when she finally leaves him in the dust she's still haunted by it to the point that it has a significant impact on her decison-making (later outlined in the Hand of Thrawn Duology and Survivor's Quest)

Devon

Maul manipulates events so that she is now cut off from the only family she has ever known and in a perfect position both situationally and emotionally to become his apprentice. She has no idea of his role in Daki's death and mistakenly believes by the end of season 1 that they are simply kindred spirits brought together by shared feelings/goals. She also sort of sees him as her default pseudo-father figure. We know that part of his reasoning for taking on an apprentice is because he "needs" her (and her power) to help him in his personal goal of getting revenge on Palpatine. Again, Devon is unaware of the conversations he's had with Rook (RIP) on the subject and that she is sort of being used as a weapon for his own purposes.

Although not yet confirmed, it's likely he will train her only to the extent that she can be useful to him (we've seen this with Ezra in some capacity so it started somewhere) but not to the point where she's powerful enough to truly challenge his authority because then that would compromise his control of the situation. She has yet to learn the truth about how Daki really died and at some point this likely-not-a-throwaway-detail is going to circle back around and potentially be instrumental in breaking her adherence to the false narrative Maul has created for her. She may also throw this line back in his face once this happens

and abandon her allegiance to him. There is also a third party (Rylee) who may or may not be the Luke equivalent in this scenario. Even if/when she leaves Maul she will likely be traumatized by this collective ordeal for the rest of her life

The official Star Wars website actually has an article devoted to the topic, to my surprise. It actually isn't too surprising, as Lucas based much of the original Star Wars trilogy off of the work of Joseph Campbell, whose work was based off of studies of history, mythology, and lore. In the case of Luke, the lightsaber is the direct manifestation of a supernatural legacy of his alone (and later on, potentially that of Leia). It was kept in solitude by Obi-Wan, knowing that it belonged to him as the successor of Anakin, and as a future leader for an order in chaos.

I am not an expert on Arthurian lore by any means and there are so many variations over the years that is a very basic description but Excalibur is technically the name for two different swords (one from the stone and one from the lake). Both apply to Luke - Arthur faces King Pellinore too early and his weapon is destroyed mid-combat and has to find a new one; the second is Arthur on the brink of death with the sword tossed into the lake, caught by a hand, and the sheathe lost forever (Luke faces Vader too early and his weapon is gone, lost in a shaft held by his own severed hand).