Mark Hamill Wanted Evil Luke Skywalker Clone for 'The Last Jedi'

What makes Mark Hamill the greatest science fiction icon of all time is easily the fact that he’s maybe a bigger “geek” than his fans. He like collecting comic books and Star Wars memorabilia just as much as the fans do, and even has deep knowledge of the expanded universe Star Wars books of yore. In fact, he even encouraged Last Jedi director Rian Johnson to try out the famous Clone Luke Skywalker plot from the novel The Last Command.

On Wednesday, GamesRadar published an excpert of an interview with Hamill forthcoming in SFX Magazine. In it, Hamill reveals that he straight-up wanted to do the clone storyline from Timothy Zahn’s novel The Last Command in which Luke Skywalker has to duel a clone of himself named Luuke Skywaker. Apparently, Hamill’s son Nathan told him all about the plot and Hamill said “‘Oh, baby, would I love that?’ Not only could you get to play your evil twin, but what a great idea that you bring Luke back, and the audience starts noticing him undermining the heroes, cutting their fuel supply inexplicably, maybe even killing one of the supporting characters. It would be so mind-boggling, and then, of course, the real Luke shows up and that mystery is solved.” But Rian Johnson wasn’t really into it.

“When I suggested it to [Rian Johnson] he said he thought that was a cool storyline too, but it’s been done.” So, it looks like that’s that. The evil clone of Luke Skywalker won’t return. Which is too bad, because it could easily explain the mystery of how Luke’s old lightsaber was rescued from the depths of Cloud City. In The Last Command, its revealed that not only was Luke’s saber retrieved, but his severed hand, too. As the moment, the audience has no idea how Luke’s saber was obtained by Maz Kanata and even less about what happened to his severed hand.

The exclusion of the Luke Skywalker clone storyline also neatly keeps Mara Jade out of the new canon of the Star Wars films. In The Last Command, Mara was an agent of the Emperor’s sworn to kill Luke Skywalker. And, by murdering his clone, she was able to fulfill her obligations. Luke and Mara later got married and had a son named Ben Skywalker. In those books, Ben was friends with his cousin, Jacen Solo, the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia. In Karen Traviss’s Legacy of the Force Star Wars novel Sacrifice, Mara Jade is murdered by Jacen Solo, who then starts calling himself Darth Caedus.

Sound familiar? Obviously, many fans of the old Star Wars books found huge similarities between Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus. The point is, Kylo Ren is something of an amalgamation of Ben Skywalker and Jacen Solo. Perhaps when Rian Johnson told Hamill that the clone Luke story was had “been done,” what he really meant was that the new Star Wars films have already borrowed enough from the books fans loved, not so long ago.

The Last Jedi is out everywhere on December 15, sadly, without a clone of Luke Skywalker.

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