Warning: turn back now if you don't want to read any Star Wars: The Last Jedi spoilers!
In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker returns after being absent from the near-entirety of The Force Awakens, and when Rey finds him, he's grizzled and grumpy and has no interest in fighting the First Order or helping Rey. The movies give us some exposition about what happened: Luke had been teaching Force-sensitive kids in the ways of the Jedi, but he had failed to save his nephew Ben Solo from the dark side; when Luke had gone to confront Ben, he fought back and lashed out, destroying Luke's training academy and, presumably, his other charges [1]. But is that all that happened to Luke to make him so bitter about the world? According to star Mark Hamill, no, it's not.
Prior to the release of the film, Hamill told Entertainment Weekly about the backstory he made up for Luke Skywalker [3], and it's heartbreaking and even a little disturbing.
"I wrote lots and lots of scenarios. I made notes that he fell in love with a woman who was a widow and had this young child. He left the Jedi to raise this young child and marry this woman. And the child got hold of a lightsaber and accidentally killed himself."
Dark. Of course, this story isn't canon (which would be sort of impossible within the narrative since Jedi aren't supposed to marry and have families). It's just the story Hamill could use to get into Luke's Last Jedi headspace, but he did run it by director Rian Johnson, who was supportive. "I sort of tested out some of my ideas just to make sure I wasn't in conflict with anything," Hamill said of Johnson. "He 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."
