Mark Hamill Invented a Tragic Past for Luke Skywalker to Understand His Role in ‘The Last Jedi’: “I Made Up a Much, Much Darker Backstory”
Mark Hamill has revealed that he created his own painful backstory for Luke Skywalker to help make sense of the character’s actions in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. During an interview on NPR’s podcast Bullseye With Jesse Thorn, Hamill opened up about how difficult it was to connect with the version of Luke he had to play in the 2017 film.
In The Last Jedi, Luke is shown living alone, cut off from the Force, and deeply disillusioned. Many fans were surprised and even upset by how different this version of Luke was compared to the hero from the original trilogy.
Hamill himself wasn’t sure about it either when he first read the script. To better understand the character’s change, he asked director Rian Johnson if he could create a backstory to explain Luke’s mindset.
“I said, ‘Can I make up my own backstory of why he is the way he is? I don’t want to just say, you know, that I have bumped and I have brain damage,’” Hamill said in the interview. “He said, ‘Yeah, do whatever you want.’ So I made up a much, much darker backstory that I thought could justify him being that way.”
In the story Hamill came up with, Luke gets married and becomes a father. But tragedy hits the family when their toddler accidentally activates a lightsaber and dies. Overwhelmed by grief, Luke’s wife dies by suicide. After losing both his child and wife, Luke cuts himself off from the Force completely.
Hamill said he got the idea from real-life stories about children who are hurt or killed after finding a gun that was left out. He mentioned a report from everytownresearch.org, which tracks these types of tragedies. In 2025 alone, they’ve reported dozens of accidental shootings by kids, with hundreds in recent years.
“That resonated with me so deeply,” Hamill said. “But he [Johnson] didn’t have the time to tell a backstory like that, I’m guessing.”
Though The Last Jedi was praised by many critics, the film caused a lot of arguments among fans. One of the most talked-about moments was when Luke briefly considers killing a young Ben Solo after seeing a vision of the destruction he might cause in the future. That moment was part of what made the role hard for Hamill to accept at first.
Still, Hamill made it clear that he respects Johnson’s work.
“I’ve heard comments from fans who think that I somehow dislike Rian Johnson,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Hamill’s backstory for Luke was never used in the film, but for him, it added emotional weight to his performance. It gave him a reason for Luke’s pain and helped him connect with the role, even if the audience never saw that part of the story.
Have something to add? Let us know in the comments below!
