“You’re Still Holding On”: The Significance of the Past in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (TLJ), is, like many modern movies, complex and nuanced, following numerous plot threads interconnected in various degrees. Still though, a handful of clear themes permeate TLJ, thanks to the work of director Rian Johnson. The one this paper will focus on is the way in which characters interact with their pasts, and how that affects them. Though the idea of the past is in almost all of the plot lines in TLJ, this paper will the arcs of Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker, for they most clearly conveys Johnson’s philosophy about the past. Through the stories of a conflicted villain and a fallen hero, Johnson lays down the message that the past is important and it is how one reacts to the past that shapes their present.

In TLJ, we find a Kylo who has killed his father and who claims that he is fully committed to the darkness, which is often symbolized by his rejection of the past. Kylo is (spoilers!) the son of Han and Leia, but Kylo constantly rejects the heritage of his legendarily heroic parents, bluntly telling Han in The Force Awakens that “Your son is gone.” Kylo increases his hatred of the past in TLJ, as evidenced by his dialogue. “Let the past die,” he proclaims. “Kill it if you have to.” But for all of Kylo’s bluster, he can’t commit to killing the past. Given the opportunity to shoot down Leia’s cruiser and kill her, Kylo hesitates, conflict on his face as his thumb hovers over the trigger. In the end, he can’t do it; he cannot bring himself to kill the past. This is the first instance of many in which Johnson subtly tells the audience that perhaps rejecting the past like Kylo isn’t the best course of action. Kylo is in a painful fight with himself throughout TLJ, a fight Johnson heavily implies is due to his rejection of the past. This connection becomes clear in the film’s finale, but since it is the confluence of both Kylo and Luke’s arcs, we will return to analyze it after turning to Luke.

Luke’s arc in TLJ starts off in a similar place as Kylo’s. The new film dives deep into Luke’s current mindset, one that is dominated by a lack of faith in the Jedi Order. TLJ reveals that Luke was at least partially responsible for Kylo’s turning to the dark side, if indirectly. Luke views Kylo’s corruption as his fault, and it is the reason for his exile. Luke’s hand in losing Kylo also serves as a large reason for Luke’s disillusionment in the Jedi. The Jedi, Luke feels, have failed time and time again, with his loss of Kylo just being the latest in a long line. Luke rejects the Jedi ways, and in doing so rejects the past, not wanting to be reminded of the failures. And like Kylo, Luke seems worse off for refusing to acknowledge the past. Mark Hamill plays Luke as a man utterly crushed and defeated, trapped by his own self loathing. Rey tries to shake him out of it and get him to train her, but Luke isn’t having it. “I came to this island to die,” he tells Reys, dropping all pretense. “It is time for the Jedi to end,” he tells Rey, adamant in his lack of belief in the Jedi. “At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out!” he snaps at one point. “It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and creation of Darth Vader,” he seethes, obstinate in his desire to do nothing. The Luke Skywalker who destroyed the Death Star and the man Rey finds are not the same. Luke has sat on his island for nearly two decades, and Johnson, through his dark characterization of Luke, shows what ignoring the past for that long does to a person. And while Luke is spurred into training Rey when R2D2 shows him Leia’s original “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi” message from all those years ago, Luke will not return with Rey to help fight the First Order. He is done being a Jedi, on that point he is resolute. He will not face his past days as a Jedi, nor will he face his past mistakes embodied in Kylo. Rey leaves, disheartened in her mentor’s lack of faith.

And now we can return to the finale, where Johnson’s messages about the past come out in full force. The Resistance is trapped, surrounded by the First Order. All hope seems lost. But then, out of nowhere, Luke arrives in the Resistance base, to the surprise of all. Luke has made the decision that he must come to terms with his past and says as much (“I came to face him, Leia.”). Luke exits the base, headed to face Kylo. Kylo sees Luke and determined to kill yet another part of his past, orders all the First Order artillery to fire on Skywalker. They do so, but it’s not enough for Kylo. “MORE!!” he screams. “MOOOREEE!!” He doesn’t just want Luke dead, he wants him wiped from the face of the earth. that is how much Kylo wants to deny his past. But despite all odds, Luke somehow survives the barrage. The past, Johnson is telling us, will not die, and it cannot be ignored. Kylo is outraged, and goes to duel Luke himself. The duel between Luke and Kylo is not just a lightsaber fight, it is a battle of philosophies between Kylo, the one who rejects the past, and Luke, the one who has come to accept it. Luke’s dialogue makes this clear his position, his acceptance of his mistakes. “I’ve failed you, Ben,” he says with tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry.” Kylo, though, won’t hear it. “The Resistance is dead! The war is over! And when I kill you, I will have killed the last Jedi!” Kylo screams, determined fully destroy his past.

And it in Luke’s response where Johnson not only solidifies Luke’s acceptance of his past, but validates the philosophy he believes is the correct one by having it come from the mouth of the franchise’s central hero. Here, TLJ and Johnson lay their cards down, making clear what has been implicit throughout the movie: the past is inescapable, and you have to comes to terms with it if you want any semblance of peace. “The Rebellion is reborn today. The war is just beginning. And I will not be the last Jedi,” Luke says. That statement seems to be ostensibly about the future, and that’s not untrue, but it is also about building on the past. The Rebellion is “reborn”, rising from the ashes of the past and learning from them to build a newer, better, ideology. The war is beginning, fueled by the lessons the Resistance has learned from the past. And Rey is going to take the the lessons she learned from Luke about the past nature of the Jedi to start a new Jedi order, one hopefully more free of its predecessors’ faults.

The past is something that everyone has to battle with, Johnson says through TLJ, and how you deal with it determines your quality of life. If you accept the past and build on it, you get the solace Luke is granted in TLJ, even if it’s not necessarily happy. Luke is crushed by his failing Kylo, that much Hamill’s portrayal makes clear, but even so, Luke arguably has a better ending than Kylo does. This may seem a bit counterintuitive, given that Luke literally dies in TLJ, but 1) his death is peaceful (Rey’s dialogue vocalizes this) and 2) Luke made his death mean something. By accepting his past and facing Kylo, Luke saved his sister, and the entire Resistance, not to mention planting the seeds for a new, better Jedi Order. Kylo, meanwhile, accomplishes nothing by his attempts to kill the past (he fails to kill Leia or Luke and to end the Resistance) and he’s left in a state of constant conflict with himself.

Johnson makes clear through the journeys of Luke and Kylo that the only viable option for dealing with the past is to accept it as Luke does, and he’s even explicitly said this in interviews. “For me, I always think that if you're cutting off the past, you're fooling yourself and you're just burying it somewhere where it's always going to come back,” Johnson said in an interview with Empire. At its heart, TLJ is a story about legacy and how different characters deal with their legacies, and Johnson makes that point clear, articulating the consequences snd benefits of rejecting and accepting the past in the arcs of Kylo and Luke, respectively.