The meaning behind the title “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is actually the simplest explanation ever
Earlier this year, when the title of Star Wars: Episode VIII was released, we all had a collective freakout. Because, gasp, who is the Last Jedi? And then, add in the fact that during the first (and so far, only!) Last Jedi teaser, Luke Skywalker grimly states, “the Jedi need to end,” things aren’t looking good for the Force sensitive.
But the bigger question remains: WHO is the Last Jedi?
Theories have run amok for the last few months, with many speculating that it’s Luke, or Rey, or Leia, or all of them together, or none of them, and it’s someone else completely different. Well, those theories are sort of correct, as the title “The Last Jedi” does in fact refer to one person — even though translated into other languages, The Last Jedi is plural, but that’s neither here no there right now.
In a new interview with The New Your Times, The Last Jedi’s director, Rian Johnson, explains, pretty simply, that the Last Jedi is Luke. Duh. The opening scroll of Force Awakens even told us that, so we’ve been freaking out over nothing.
“It’s in the opening crawl of ‘The Force Awakens.’ Luke Skywalker, right now, is the last Jedi,” Johnson explains.
Wow, so it’s been staring us in the face this whole time, and we were busy piling together 45,609 different fan theories to notice. We certainly did notice this before, because come on try and deny you haven’t watched Last Jedi 100+ times over the lat two years. But this just seems so…simple.
But just because Luke is the designated Last Jedi, doesn’t mean that won’t change.
“There’s always wiggle room in these movies — everything is from a certain point of view — but coming into our story, he is the actual last of the Jedi,” Johnson continues. “[Luke’s] removed himself and is alone on this island, for reasons unknown. [When Luke says, ‘It’s time for the Jedi to end,’ it] sounds pretty dire. That’s something that we’re definitely going to dig into. The heart of the movie is Luke and Rey. It follows all the other characters, but its real essence is the development of the two of them. And it’s absolutely tied up in that question of, What is Luke’s attitude toward the Jedi?”
That answers the Last Jedi speculation for now, but knowing the Star Wars mythology, there’ll be roughly a hundred more questions to come.
