#*snore*

Sorry if this is rushed, i'm fairly rusty and it's two thirty in the morning. but tada, i'm alive XD

“Tch, I tried being gentle and slow, yet this is how you repay me? By running off with my only friend? For shame Byte.” Muffled screams rang out from every direction as this iteration of the underground decayed in a way. A pair of red slippers stepped into view, or are they flip-flops? Everything about Error shifts so much with his glitching that I can hardly tell. Slowly I lifted my head to look up at Error. Slowly an underground being dissolved into lines of overlapping and intermingling zero’s and one’s came into view, along with Error himself as I raised my head to meet his gaze. 

 I also always get presents or things to borrow, which is nice but also a bit… well, I don’t want to just get stuff without doing something in return, you know… but today I got:

 Two very nice shirts my “sister-in-law” can’t wear anymore since they are too small, and they make nice combos worn over a light t-shirt or something

My brother promised me to let me borrow his “Star Wars: Rebells” blu-rays next time we meet so I can watch them for the first time. (He’s the only one who really shares my nerdy-ness when I comes to movies and video games, though the others just… are happy when I’m happy, they just don’t understand my passion for it. XD)

My other brother made me the official cat-sitter next time they go on vacation, meaning I get to pet two cats every day for a week or so yay

PREPARE THYSELVES I AM FEELING A BIT TALKATIVE

Okay, first off the bat, I’m going to try and list the call-back moments that weren’t as obvious and may or may not have been on purpose. 

The bombs in Paige Tico’s ship? Straight out of the Blue Shadow Virus arc on TCW.

Uh...part of Phasma’s helmet coming off after a strike? Haven’t we seen that before? (OH GOD MY HEART)

The entire Kylo Ren TIE scene. (I’ll try spinning! That’s a good trick! “Follow my lead.”)

Luke BRUSHING OFF HIS DAMN CLOAK LIKE HIS FOREFATHERS BEFORE HIM?

Obviously the elevator scene with Kylo and Rey harkening back to ROTJ. (What is with this entire universe and elevators? honestly) And a lot of the throne room scene, as well.

Follow the spooky wolf animal to safety?

Okay, the whole Canto Bight scene. I LOVE that sequence. Canto Bight is kind of like an inverse Tatooine. Instead of being a wretched hive of scum and villainy, it’s a fancy hive of high-class scum and villainy. And did the Fathier race (space horses) not remind you a bit of a certain pod-racing sequence? 

Okay, that was the fun part. (I’m sure I’m missing some but it’s late and whatevs) and now Luke. Ohhhhh Luke. 

Rian Johnson did his homework. Luke’s whole reaction to the Jedi - Rian took into account the whole history - the Prequels, TCW, Rebels, the OT - and that all led to Luke sequestering himself on a remote island. In many ways, everything that came before the sequels was yes, the story of the Skywalker family, but also the story of the downfall of the Jedi Order. Luke says it himself when he says (I’m paraphrasing) that it was vanity of the Jedi to believe that if the Jedi went extinct, the Light (side of the Force) would be lost. I LOVE that line. I’m a hardcore Jedi defender, and yet he has it right. 

But let’s step back here for a moment. Imagine you are Luke after ROTJ. You’ve defeated the big bad, this Palpatine guy (and remember, Luke probably only finds out about Sidious’s rise to power later). You’ve turned your evil dad back to the Light as he made one last heroic sacrifice. You are literally the last (semi)trained Jedi in the universe. 

It’s a little lonely out there for Luke, especially for someone with his power. And he KNOWS his lineage, how that could go wrong.

So what does he do? Who does he consult? I mean, I guess he could ask ghost-dad, ghost-uncle, and creepy ghost-grandfather troll dude. But they are all from the old Jedi line, even Anakin. And something tells me they weren’t hanging around all that much. So Luke goes and consults some old Jedi texts, tries to rebuild the Jedi in the way that Anakin, and Yoda, and Obi-wan would have wanted him to. 

And it fails disastrously. Because the Jedi of that time failed disastrously, and Luke was just repeating all their mistakes. (I mean, we don’t know anything about this academy, so this is my speculation as to how he got to where he was on Ach-to).

Of course, I can’t move forward without speaking about the Ben Solo almost-murder scene. Yes, maybe out of character. Maybe not. So Luke is half-assing this Jedi Academy thing because he feels it’s the right thing to do (not that Luke is incapable, but he didn’t have any formal Jedi training like Anakin or Obi-wan, and grew up on a backwater desert planet with what was probably not your typical educational system). AND, as an educator myself, let’s just say that DOING something well and TEACHING something well are two very different skills.

So Snoke is hiding out in Hondo Ohnaka’s old stronghold gathering his Forces and doing a spooky brain connecting thing with Kylo, corrupting him. (Okay, one part of the sentence is false and I won’t get into some of the other reasons Kylo turned due to his family and lineage and expectations because that’s been done to death.) 

Luke’s probably a little overwhelmed and he’s been through some things, you know, with the dark side and his family and maybe feels a little self-conscious about this. And THEN let us not forget that BOTH Obi-wan and Yoda urged Luke to just outright kill Vader because he was evil. (I will come back to this point later.) So this idea of killing evil has already been implanted in Luke’s mind, even though he resisted it the first time. 

But now? He’s older, he’s doing what he thinks is the correct Jedi way, and he knows that something is off with Ben Solo. And then he reaches out and there it is, his father all over again. And perhaps there are those voices of his mentors, telling him to kill. Would it happen again? Did he have the strength to fight the same battle again and again? 

It’s Luke, though, so of course, it was only a half-second slip. 

It was enough from Ben Solo/Kylo (and let’s also not forget that Ben was so dark at that point that his first reaction was to fight Luke and go on a killing spree.)

So Luke is guilty as hell and retreats. He realizes the faults of the Jedi Order, their mindset, their hypocrisy, and cuts himself off from the Force. 

Here is what is interesting to me. You know who else thought the Jedi Order was full of hypocrites who couldn’t see beyond the Code?

Dooku.

But what did Dooku do? Join the Sith. (And look, I love Dooku as a character, but let’s be real here.)

What did Luke do? Isolate himself so he wouldn’t be a danger to others. And that, my friends, is a very Luke thing to do. 

And in the end, when it came to fight (as many others have pointed out) - Luke never fought. Not really. He looked great with his father’s lightsaber, but never swung it at Kylo, just danced around. And oh yeah, he was a projection the entire time. The ultimate pacifist fighting (Satine Kryze would be so proud and offended at the oxymoron). 

And the Jedi? Maybe that one Moff was right. They, in some ways, are an ancient religion, with all the issues that come with trying to preserve centuries-old social mores in a contemporary society. Obi-wan and Anakin/Vader’s fights were done in the context of the old. And Luke was that bridge between the old and the new (which we see in Rey and Kylo Ren and stable kid). 

Off topic from the Jedi for a minute, but one of the things I loved about the Ach-to montage of green milk and large harpooning is that it showed Luke being Tatooine Luke - just in a different environment. You know he had to do similar things on Tatooine, and he just adjusted back to his farmstead life, to some degree. And his humor is not lost. Perhaps a little more wizened, but that happens to all of us as we age :)

Now about that failure thing. Let’s remember Yoda’s first famous phrase to Luke on Dagobah. “Do or do not, there is no try.” That’s a long ways away from “failure is a teacher.” And the thing is...both Yoda and Obi-wan failed (to a degree) with Luke. He ran off to Cloud City, got his hand chopped off, and things after ESB weren’t looking so hot. And that’s why I think it’s great for Yoda to come to this and bring it to Luke in TLJ, because it just shows how far the remaining (ghosts) of the Jedi Order have come to look past the attitudes that got them into the Darth Sidious mess to begin with.