‘Star Wars’: Mark Hamill Thinks Luke Skywalker Would Be a Teacher If Not a Jedi
No doubt Star Wars actor Mark Hamill knows that fan obsession over Luke Skywalker will never end, something he can keep alive further through social media. Hamill frequently interacts with fans and answers their unceasing questions about Luke.
Recently, when a fan asked him what Luke would have done had he not been a Jedi, Hamill had an astute answer. Rather than give a complex response, it was one grounded in logic and reality.
If the answer he said would have held true, it ties Luke to the real world where we are. At the same time, many media analysts think Luke was made to be a Jedi, making any other life option seem moot.
What did Mark Hamill say about Luke’s alternate life?
On June 16, according to Screen Rant, a fan wrote Hamill this on Twitter: “Bit of a silly question for @HamillHimself. What would Luke be doing as a profession if he didn’t become a Jedi knight, BUT left that desert planet whose name escapes me at the moment?”
Hamill had no hesitation on answering: “I’d like to think he would have been a teacher.”
This reply had a lot of people amazed he would say such a thing. It also had a lot of teachers reacting at near giddy levels. If it seemed like the right answer to say, not all fans looked at it as a real possibility, though.
Someone replied to Hamill with this notable story element: “It’s in the script @HamillHimself. After harvest, Luke was going to transmit his application to the Imperial Academy so he could become a pilot. He would have been flying TIE fighters for the Empire if he hadn’t stumbled onto a fugitive R2 unit who led him to Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Does Mark Hamill’s response make Luke more relatable?
Saying Luke would become a teacher might have made a lot of people happy, yet does it make Luke more in tune with the real world? Star Wars lore is always so far away from reality that it seems refreshing to imagine Luke settling down and being a teacher like someone would here on earth.
Maybe Luke would have fit in just fine if the characters ever happened to stumble upon our planet. Then again, Hamill never made it clear exactly what Luke would teach.
A lot of fans simply say Luke was destined to become a Jedi. Nothing could have prevented this since the relationship with Ben Kenobi set everything in motion. As with some of the best sci-fi movies, there was a bit of a cosmic loop there in history repeating itself and then being corrected.
Regardless, it does beg the question about what kind of teachers were out there in the galaxy far, far away. With war being centrally focused in the films, what kind of ordinary lives existed out there?
Some fans thought Luke was not a good Jedi teacher
On places like Quora, some fans suggested Luke was never a good teacher anyway because he lost students. Many have gone in to correct this notion Luke lost his trainees. In canon, he only lost Ben Solo because of life circumstances.
Others look back to the now non-canon Legends book series and mention Luke lost several students there because he took on too much at once. With inexperience in teaching that many potential Jedi, things fell apart.
At least this was disregarded in the official Star Wars timeline. One would think after everything Luke learned the hard way from Yoda, he could have taught anything with aplomb.
Maybe someday fans will see how ordinary, non-Jedi teachers work in the Star Wars universe. Hopefully they got better pay than earthly teachers still fight to earn.
