Character Analysis: Why Did Luke Skywalker Fall?

Recently I was watching this video from Overly Sarcastic Productions:

In general, I love this video channel. It’s a great tool for writers and storytellers who would to dive a little deeper into elements of storytelling and literary analysis – all in the guise of pop culture commentary. They’re great and I recommend checking them out.

That said, there was one thing I took umbrage with during the above video, namely this line: “And Luke actually has it worse! Apparently Mr. Paragon hero savior of the whole dang galaxy, noted for his tendency to never give up on family members even if they’re super evil, made a cursory attempt to revive the Jedi Order and then when his nephew turned evil and killed everybody, he [Luke] gave up forever and went off to a distant planet to sulk for the rest of his life.”

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack there. But my first takeaway was the simple: “That’s not what happened. Because it’s not. It’s so fundamentally not and it’s a lazy error, like the author of the video read the cliff-notes of The Last Jedi instead of watching the actual movie. So, let’s do some character analysis and answer the question: Why did Luke Skywalker fall?

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