My Response

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]This is extremely viral right now and it's super controversial. It's making the rounds. It's about Luke Skywalker and this gentleman's take. His name is Pop Detective as you can see right here.

[00:00:10]So, we're going to go ahead and react to it.

[00:00:14]>> I don't know who this impostor is, but it's not Luke. And I'm not just talking about the weird CGI Uncanny Valley thing.

[00:00:20]>> You know, it's going to get spicy, bro.

[00:00:23]You know, >> I'm talking about how Luke Skywalker was never a badass. Throughout the entire original trilogy, Luke was not a badass.

[00:00:31]In fact, his story is the antithesis of a power fantasy. It's a deconstruction of a power fantasy in many ways.

[00:00:39]>> No, it's the hero's journey. And essentially, his whole point of being there was to be the catalyst to bring it full circle for Anakin Skywalker to bring balance to the force by killing the Emperor. That was pretty much it. So even during the OT, Anakin was still the chosen one. And George has said that many times.

[00:00:56]>> This scene is sort of the culmination of a weird Mandela effect phenomenon wherein a whole bunch of Star Wars fans and including the creators of this show have this false memory of Luke Skywalker being this badass Jedi warrior with almost godlike powers. But that never happened in the original trilogy. In the original trilogy, Luke Skywalker is a bumbling failure for the most part. He's constantly getting knocked unconscious.

[00:01:21]He's constantly losing battles and he's getting captured all the time. The thing that people remember from Return of the Jedi is the scene where he enters Jabba's palace for the first time. And it seems like he's going to be a badass.

[00:01:33]But then he promptly fails. He fails to shoot Jabba the Hut. He almost dies to the Rancor and he ends up in chains.

[00:01:40]>> He's still training. He's still learning. The whole point of Luke Skywalker and we're this is I love these conversations so this is exactly what it was like in the 90s and 2000s. It was these kinds of conversations. So I've been doing this far before YouTube even existed. So I'm ready, man. This is what I'm here for. So Luke Skywalker, the point of his whole journey is to show him disillusioned as he's looking out to the twin sons. He doesn't know where he belongs. All of that, right? He's kind of this whiny kidish. But I was going into station to pick up some power converters and he was just super whiny and annoying, right? He just kind of sucked at everything. And Leia really helped steer that entire original trilogy. And she was, I would say, more of the badass kind of helping these dopey dudes.

[00:02:22]>> Somebody has to save our skins.

[00:02:24]>> But then Luke Skywalker steps up, decides to train a little bit, cuts it short, goes to fight Vader, gets his hand cut off, loses so badly, emotionally, physically, just but absolutely decimated. And then goes back and trains with Yoda. comes back and he is a total badass which exactly what he was but he was still failing because he wasn't there yet. He only had a few years of training even as the son of the chosen one. He was the one that was supposed to be the new which to me in rebels when they say like oh he's the chosen one. No he's not.

[00:03:01]George Lucas always said that Darth Vader Anakin Skywalker was the chosen one is always the chosen one. Even Luke Skywalker during the original trilogy, Anakin was still the chosen one and Luke was only the catalyst. So all of this is showing Luke is progressing and it's training and its character development and took three films for him to somewhat build up more character development and he still loses to the Emperor. That is character progression. And then when you see him in the Mandalorian, he is even further progressed. It's 5 years after he lost to the Emperor. He has trained, he has studied, he has scoured the galaxy for more holocrons, more information. He's meditated. He's become more one with himself. He has talked to the Force ghosts. And he has really expanded his understanding of the Force.

[00:03:54]And he is now more of a badass. Now, is this his peak limit? No, absolutely not.

[00:03:59]That's the point. He's always improving.

[00:04:01]He's always getting better. Let's continue. There's nothing badass about what happens here. And that's actually really important.

[00:04:07]>> That's the point. Luke Skywalker is captured three separate times just in Return of the Jedi. First by Jabba, then by the Ewoks, and finally turns himself into the Empire. I mean, he spends most of that movie in handcuffs. In fact, the only time that he comes close to being maybe >> he wanted to be captured so he could Yeah. But anyways, >> badass is in that final fight with Darth Vader, but he is this close to turning into a Sith Lord. If he doesn't stop and throw away his weapon, he will turn to the dark side. The movie is not ambiguous about that point. It is very clear. So, how did we get here? How do we get to a place where a critique of a power fantasy >> training? How did we get from same thing? How did we get from Luke Twin Sons, a new hope to that scene we just saw where he almost became a Sith Lord?

[00:04:55]Training, progression, character development. This is just amplified now.

[00:04:59]That's it. a warning about how absolute power corrupts absolutely gets retconed into a pure power fantasy. Well, part of that has to do with the extended universe, right? The sort of wish fulfillment fanfiction that we find in comic books and video games and novels.

[00:05:17]I don't think it's wish fulfillment. I think it's just a progression of where the character is headed. Now, you can completely change where that character is headed, you know, cuz you can see the pattern of, okay, he's he's doing training a bit and he's failing. He's training a big failing each time he gets better and better. Okay, so he's kind of going up. Or you can completely change that character entirely, which is what Ryan Johnson did in The Last Jedi, which is why so many fans were like, "What is this? This is not Luke. This doesn't make any sense. He's completely a different person. Jake Skywalker."

[00:05:49]>> Uh stories that turn Luke into a just godlike badass where he sees an Imperial walker and then crushes it with his mind.

[00:05:56]>> Yeah. Now, part of that is because a simple power fantasy sells a lot better.

[00:06:00]If you're going to sell action figures and uh serial and, you know, Lego sets and video games, a simple power fantasy sells really well, especially to young men who want to sort of embody that feeling of power.

[00:06:13]>> Yes, we all want to embody that feeling of power. And that's why these fictitious car these fantasy fictional characters are so beloved and so important because we like to see ourselves in them that maybe one day we can be that heroic and that virtuous and that awesome. And when you destroy those characters like Ryan Johnson did or whatever, you completely hurt the inside soul of anyone who was a fan of that character. It's so vital that these writers who are coming into Star Wars or, you know, Marvel or DC really take good care of the character and continue them along their true and honest path.

[00:06:51]Otherwise, you're not just ruining a character in a fictional story. You're ruining a lot of hope for a lot of people in the world who really take these characters seriously. And who are we to decide who finds what super important as a pillar of hope and really got them out of some dark times? I'm one of those people.

[00:07:11]>> He's me. One of the many things I appreciate about The Last Jedi is that it addresses this >> should have watched the whole thing. I don't understand >> question directly. It addresses this false collective memory of what Luke Skywalker is.

[00:07:25]>> I think what I'm going to walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order. And then of course he does exactly that only it's not him. It's a projection of all the things people want him to be. It is a false image of himself, the badass Jedi warrior. And then that false memory serves as a distraction so the resistance can escape.

[00:07:47]>> I mean or he could have just been there and like done what he did in Dark Empire and crushed.

[00:07:53]Why is this so difficult for people to grasp?

[00:07:57]>> This is not Luke Skywalker.

[00:07:59]>> That is Luke Skywalker. Yeah, I mean I I think you know I I have done such a due diligence in trying to understand why people like The Last Jedi, why the few people I've seen online like The Last Jedi and their points because in order to be able to debate something or understand, you can't just be like writing it off and be like, "No, it's or what people do." No, you're anaphobe. You're you're if you don't like it, you're it's like what? No, dude. Is it just because someone likes something or doesn't like something, it doesn't mean that they're crazy or they fall on some political spectrum or that they're an istafo or like you know like they have reasons for liking or disliking something. So I'm trying to understand where they come from and this whole idea of like oh yeah he was what everyone thought that he was supposed to be. It's like why do you think the galaxy had this image of Luke Skywalker?

[00:08:47]Because of who he became, right? Because of the things he did. He defeated the Emperor. The galaxy doesn't know that it was actually Vader, but he defeated the Emperor. He defeated Vader. And that was his journey. He was the chosen one's son. He was the heir. He was everything Anakin was supposed to be. Still didn't become as powerful as prime Anakin could have been had he not fallen to the dark side or, you know, lost all of his limbs, but he was close enough. And that progression of constantly getting better and better and better and learning and failing and learning is one of the extremely human factors of Luke but with superpowers.

[00:09:27]And when you take a human factor like that that we all go through in life, you, me, fail, get better, fail, get better, pick ourselves up, always >> get back up, always get back up >> and try again. You can see that in a superhero. And then you can also feel super and it motivates you to want to succeed to want to try and to know that yeah life is difficult and when you just can't get it you just got to keep trying and then you you still won't get it and you just keep trying and keep going and then eventually you get it just like Luke just like Ahsoka just like Anakin like you get you get your arm cut off you get you know like metaphorically these are all so transcendent through time and through our lives and that's why it's so beautiful and so important that we stick to the truth of these characters and how they were written.

[00:10:15]Character was written shitty, then fine.

[00:10:17]But you can't just have a character that was built really well and it has great progression and then fundamentally change everything off of screen when you haven't seen him for like 30 plus years.

[00:10:26]And then the same goes for you can't have a character that didn't earn his or her stripes and then give them all of the accolades, all of the power without earning it. That to me is just like a a kid that was born super rich and didn't have to work a day in his life. I think we all kind of hate that, right? It's just like what? That's not life. What is that? I don't agree with any of the decisions made in The Last Jedi. I don't agree with any of the decisions made with a lot of the Disney Star Wars stuff. And I don't think that we should be settling for mediocrity. I don't think we should be settling for characters that are fundamentally destroyed or veering off of a path that George Lucas had created for them to continue on. And I think that's the main issue that so many people have. I made a comment here and I I wrote I I said, "No, man. The point of this progression is Luke in the OT was about him finding himself from a disillusioned farm boy not knowing where he belongs to being an impatient Padawan then being a Jedi Knight in Return of the Jedi. The stark contrast of Luke looking out to the binary sons and then walking into Jabba's palace shows his transformation and he still wasn't perfect, right? The Luke in Mando was a continuation of the proficient Jedi Master he was becoming akin to the EU. This was what George intended. He wasn't meant to be just stagnant after Return of the Jedi. Luke keeps ascending into the light. He is what his father could have been. I see a lot of you guys, you know, like supporting me. Tell him, you know, talk Exactly. In the OT, he was so fresh and still learning. Just wait till later, man. Total badass. Yeah, bro.

[00:11:56]Cutting down bunch of robots with laser sword is what makes Peak Jedi. Just how Yoda taught Luke and ESB in return.

[00:12:01]Obviously, that's a a troll comment.

[00:12:04]They're not understanding at all the fact that Luke could have cut down stormtroopers or dummies or whatever you want. He cut down trees. The opposing force was dark troopers and that was what was in the way and Luke took care of that with beautiful aspects of lightsaber wielding and the force in general. So, the troll comment doesn't really apply here because it's just part of character progression really. Thank you, Justin. Well put. I agree with you here. Don't care, didn't ask. a racist.

[00:12:33]I say, "Yeah, it's a istanophobe." High IQ comment right there. Love your content. Want to buy a saber one day.

[00:12:39]What's interesting is I like he saw on the side of things. However, Luke isn't weak for so many reasons. But I do think folks who watch Last Jedi come up with lots of strange but interesting hypothesis. Unfortunately, it's based on a movie that says Star Wars, but it really wasn't. The sequels aren't canon to me, but they do show what happens when, although interesting, but wrong hands touch something and not understand it. We don't have scripts, comics books, cartoons, video games. Right, Kathy? So, that's what I think about him and his analysis of Luke Skywalker. I think it was done beautifully from the OT into that little glimpse we saw him in the Mandalorian season 2 finale. And I think that's why a lot of us got so emotional because we thought we lost that forever and we were never going to see that version of Luke, our hero that we looked up to so much as a kid. And so when we got to see him again, it was just, wo, like there he is, you know, and it just gives you this wave of emotion. So it's very important that we we do justice to these characters and uh in doing that, you know, you you do justice to the fandom that fell in love with these characters, too, because they were written so well. So that's my thoughts on that. Love you guys. May the force be with you and let me know what you think about this too. Great day.

[00:13:58]>> Now fulfill your destiny.