Mark Hamill Created His Own Dark Backstory For Luke Skywalker

You won't see anything about this in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It only exists in the mind of Mark Hamill and it definitely isn't canon.

In order to put himself into the mind of a grizzled and cynical Jedi in exile, Hamill came up with his own backstory for Luke Skywalker. Although it's not the same vision that director Rian Johnson has for Skywalker, it helped Hamill get himself into the head of a new version of Skywalker that's so different from the one in the original trilogy.

"Actors like backstories," Hamill told Entertainment Weekly. "They want to know motivation and all those things, and it's such a blank slate. You know, if you look at it intellectually, I realized that it's not my story anymore and so what [Luke] did or did not do in the intervening years aren't really important to the audience at this point, but I have to work it out for myself."

Hamill described his own backstory for Luke after Return of the Jedi, but remember: this isn't what really happened.

"I wrote lots and lots of scenarios," Hamill said. "I made notes that [Luke] fell in love with a woman who was a widow and had this young child." However, Jedi are basically monks and aren't supposed to have romantic relationships, and Hamill's plot is especially heartbreaking. "[Luke] left the Jedi to raise this young child and marry this woman. And the child got hold of a lightsaber and accidentally killed himself."

That would definitely have an effect on Luke, but there obviously won't be any allusion to that imaginary backstory in The Last Jedi. "It's nothing to do with the story, but when I think about gun violence and you read these tragic stories of kids getting hold of their parents' guns and killing a sibling or themselves, I mean, I had to go to really dark places to get where Luke needed to be for this story."

Of course, we know from The Force Awakens that Luke eventually returns to the Jedi and runs a training academy that his troubled nephew Ben Solo destroys. But The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson gave Hamill the green light to use that imaginary backstory. "I sort of tested out some of my ideas just to make sure I wasn't in conflict with anything," Hamill says. "[Johnson] was really nurturing in that regard, encouraging me to find ways to justify the actions in this movie. But like I say, that little story I told about Luke leaving the Jedi and getting married, that's not officially what happens."

We should find out a little more about what really did happen to Luke when The Last Jedi lands in theaters Dec. 15.