Luke Skywalker Might Still Be a Virgin in 'The Last Jedi'

In 2017, in an appearance on the Late, Late Show, Mark Hamill asserted that the original Star Wars films never “addressed adult sexuality.” He also seemed to imply that that Luke was “inexperienced” prior to his adventures in A New Hope. Now, with Luke Skywalker set to return in Star Wars: The Last Jedi on December 15, the one question everyone should be asking is whether or not he ever got laid.

Luke Skywalker’s bespoke green lightsaber and questions of Rey’s paternity dominate a lot of fan discussions in these final days leading up to The Last Jedi. But whether or not Luke ever used his other lightsaber or fired his proton torpedoes should be a hotter topic with hardcore fans. Hamill might think Luke was “inexperienced,” prior to A New Hope, but there may be reason to believe Luke did have sex with someone prior to becoming a weird hermit in the newest Star Wars movie.

We all know who Luke Skywalker’s daddy is, but whether or not Luke himself is a father remains to be seen … not that he needs to have a kid to have used some Force. But if he is a virgin, there’s certainly a precedent for that: Star Wars movies love virgins. Luke’s grandmother, Shmi Skywalker, gave birth to Anakin, but told Qui-Gon Jinn in The Phantom Menace that “there was no father,” making the conception of Anakin the sci-fi version of a “virgin birth.”

Luke’s dad Anakin definitely wasn’t a virgin at all: he and Padmé Amidala did it, and she got pregnant with Luke and Leia. That marriage didn’t work out so well, and at this point, the question of Jedi celibacy gets dicey. Attack of the Clones establishes that the Jedi Order in Anakin’s time were forbidden to have “attachment” or “possession,” which nominally translated into no marriage or procreation allowed. But were Jedi allowed no-strings-attached flings?

In January 2016, author Emily Asher-Perrin argued that just because Jedi can’t get married, it doesn’t mean they are forbidden from feeling the Force flow through them and into another person. And even if they were forbidden from casual encounters of the Jedi kind, that didn’t stop Anakin from becoming the most powerful Skywalker ever in private with Padmé Amidala, so we know that their knighthood doesn’t include a chastity belt.

After Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker thinks of himself as a Jedi, which probably means he takes on their philosophies and views, too. The new canonical Marvel Comics establishes that Luke got ahold of Obi-Wan’s journals after A New Hope, which means Luke probably has a working knowledge of how the Jedi behaved in his father’s time. First supposition: If Luke Skywalker is a virgin at the time of Return of the Jedi, then he remains a virgin forever, because he takes the conventional approach to the rules of the old Jedi Order. Attachment is forbidden: so Luke puts his libido in deep carbon freeze.

But what about before that? Even if Luke Skywalker is totally celibate by the time of The Force Awakens, it’s possible that he made the jump to hyperspace with someone in his life before Return of the Jedi. In A New Hope, Luke certainly comes across as seeing himself as a heteronormative person: He’s attracted to women, and tragically, unbeknownst to himself, has the hots for his sister. Based on Luke’s naivety in A New Hope, and in contrast with Han Solo — a guy who packs a big blaster — one could just assume Luke is a virgin by his behavior alone. He’s clumsy around women, and seems to have pent-up frustrations: classic virgin behavior, right?

Well, not necessarily. Just like other young men growing up on farms, Luke lives around a lot of non-humans, many of which may not have strictly binary definitions of gender or sexual designation. In fact, the Hutts — a race who control Luke’s planet of Tatooine — were once considered to be hermaphrodites in the old Legends canon. This has since been reversed, but still, if the Hutts could have been hermaphrodites, other aliens Luke met on Tatooine might have been, too.

Luke Skywalker also might not be “straight” in the way our planet defines the term. Last year, Mark Hamill even confirmed the various possible interpretations of Luke’s sexuality. “If you think Luke is gay, of course he is,” he said. “You should not be ashamed of it. Judge Luke by his character, not by who he loves.”

But who might Luke have loved, even briefly? Assuming again that he is celibate by The Force Awakens, there are number of possible sexual partners for Luke Skywalker from the time right before A New Hope to Return of the Jedi.

First up is Camie, a young woman who hung around the infamous Toche Station on Tatooine and who was buddies with Luke’s friends Biggs and “Fixer.” Camie was played by Koo Stark during the production of the original movie, though all of her scenes were cut from the film. Still, Camie is totally canon. Her appearances from A New Hope were re-canonized in the current run of the Star Wars Marvel comics. And just because she later dates one of Luke’s friends, Fixer, Camie is still definitely a candidate for having helped Luke take down any energy shield surrounding his Tatooine cherry.

There’s also the possibility that Luke first lit his lightsaber with his buddy Biggs Darklighter. These two had a special bond on Tatooine, and perhaps even experimented with being more than wingmen prior to Biggs leaving for the Imperial Academy. If we take Hamill’s quote at face-value, this then creates a whole host of lovers for Luke during his time in the Rebellion. Everyone from Wedge Antilles to General Rieekann could have warmed up Luke in the cold confines of Echo Base on Hoth during The Empire Strikes Back. Who knows?

After destroying the Death Star, Luke might have become very attractive to all the men, women, and fish-people who served in the Rebel Alliance. His confidence in The Empire Strikes Back might come from having become a military hero, but it also might mean the Force was with him, and a different rebel, every single night.

The canon novel Heir to the Jedi by Kevin Hearne gives Luke a definitive possible lover in the form of Nakari Kelen, a woman who served the Rebellion and went on bunch of missions with Luke. Throughout the book Naraki gives Luke a lot of “winks” and “nudges,” and because the book is written in first-person from Luke’s point of view, there’s very suggestive passages where Luke goes full-on romance novelist. Get this: “Nakari leaned in close and peered over my shoulder, a few wild curls of her hair brushed against my ear. She smelled of citrus and mint.” Then later, Luke tells the reader, “Nakari surprised me by inviting me to relax in her room …”

Heir to the Jedi makes it clear Nakari and Luke are into each other, but Luke might still be nervous about activating his lightsaber with her. While the old ‘80s Marvel comics gave Luke a love interest of turncoat pilot Shira Brie, Nakari is the only in-canon character AT ALL who we definitely know Luke was attracted to, other than, um, Leia. This means Nakari is the best candidate to have relieved Luke of his virginity based on what we know in canon. And guess what, in the only book in which she appears, she dies.

If Luke Skywalker was a virgin after meeting Nakari in Heir to the Jedi, it’s a good bet he stayed that way, assuming he took on an oath of celibacy after becoming a full-on Jedi after Return of the Jedi (though who was there to enforce it?). Let’s be honest: The Luke of A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back seems like a potentially sexual person: The Luke of Return of the Jedi does not.

In the various Star Wars novels and comics published in the 1990s, Luke Skywalker had two lovers. The less famous of the two was Callista, a ghost of a dead Jedi woman who reanimated herself in the body of one of Luke’s Jedi students named Cray in the novel The Crystal Star. Because this fact is both non-canon, and renders Luke a necrophiliac, it’s best ignored. But his second, more famous lover, was Mara Jade, a character who he married and had a kid with: Ben Skywalker.

Mara Jade is one of the most beloved characters from the “Legends” stories, but as of now, is no longer a “real” Star Wars character. Still, the Star Wars novel in which Mara Jade first appeared — Heir to the Empire — also included the character of Grand Admiral Thrawn, a guy who was surprisingly re-canonized this year in Rebels. If Thrawn could re-enter Star Wars canon, why not Mara Jade? Several fans even theorized that in The Force Awakens, Luke is standing over Mara Jade’s grave, and that Mara Jade was killed by Kylo Ren.

This theory isn’t as crazy as it sounds: In the old Star Wars, books Leia and Han’s son also turned to the Dark side and did kill Luke’s wife. So, if the backstory for The Force Awakens reveals something similar, then the side effect will be definite proof that Luke Skywalker is indeed a renegade Jedi, like his father before him.

Yoda told us in The Empire Strikes Back: “always in motion is the future,” though it’s unlikely he was referring to the motion of the ocean of Luke’s little island in The Force Awakens. Still, if Rey is eventually revealed to be Luke’s daughter in Episode VIII, then there would be definitive answer to the most important question in all of Star Wars: Having a daughter would mean Luke Skywalker is definitely not a virgin.