Luke Skywalker

Luke Skywalker was a Force-sensitive human male who rose from a moisture farm on Tatooine to become the foremost Jedi of his era. The son of Anakin Skywalker and Senator Padme Amidala, and twin brother of Leia Organa, he was hidden on Tatooine as an infant to keep him from the Galactic Empire and his father, who had fallen to the dark side as Darth Vader. Trained by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda, Luke destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin, turned his father back to the light at the Battle of Endor, and later attempted to rebuild the Jedi Order before his death in 34 ABY.

Childhood on Tatooine#

Luke was born in 19 BBY on the asteroid medical facility of Polis Massa, where his mother died shortly after delivering him and his twin sister. To protect the children from the Emperor and from their father, Obi-Wan Kenobi carried the infant Luke to Tatooine and placed him with Owen and Beru Lars, who raised him as their nephew on their moisture farm. Kenobi settled nearby in the Dune Sea to watch over the boy from a distance, occasionally intervening to keep him safe without revealing himself.

Luke grew into an adventurous youth with a gift for flying, racing his T-16 skyhopper through Beggar's Canyon and dreaming of leaving the planet to join the Imperial Academy as his friend Biggs Darklighter intended to do. He chafed against the endless labor of farm life and against his uncle's insistence that he stay. He knew almost nothing of his parentage, having been told only that his father had been a navigator on a spice freighter.

The droids and the Battle of Yavin#

Luke's life changed when his uncle purchased two droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, that had escaped the captured Rebel ship carrying the stolen plans for the Death Star. R2-D2 carried a message from Leia Organa addressed to Obi-Wan Kenobi. When Luke went searching for the runaway astromech, Kenobi rescued him from Tusken Raiders and revealed that his father had been a Jedi Knight. With the Lars homestead destroyed and his aunt and uncle killed by stormtroopers, Luke chose to leave Tatooine and learn the ways of the Force.

The pair hired the smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca to carry them to Alderaan aboard the Millennium Falcon, only to find the planet destroyed and the Falcon drawn into the Death Star. There Luke helped rescue Princess Leia from her cell while Kenobi disabled the station's tractor beam and fell to Darth Vader's blade. Escaping to the Rebel base on Yavin 4, Luke flew an X-wing in the desperate assault on the battle station. Guided by Kenobi's voice and trusting the Force rather than his targeting computer, he fired the proton torpedoes that destroyed the Death Star, becoming the hero of Yavin.

Training under Yoda#

After the Rebels were driven from their base on Hoth, Luke traveled to the swamp world of Dagobah on the instruction of Kenobi's spirit to seek out the Jedi Master Yoda. The ancient Master, living in exile, was reluctant to take so old and impatient a student, but agreed to train him. Luke learned to use the Force through telekinetic exercises and faced a vision of his own darkness within a cave strong in the dark side.

His training was cut short when he sensed his friends in danger in Cloud City on Bespin. Despite the warnings of both Yoda and Kenobi that he was not ready, Luke left to confront Vader. In their duel the Sith Lord severed Luke's hand and revealed that he was Luke's father, a truth that shattered the young Jedi. Luke escaped, was fitted with a prosthetic hand, and resolved to redeem his father rather than destroy him.

The redemption of Vader#

After rescuing Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine, Luke returned briefly to Dagobah, where Yoda confirmed that Vader was his father before dying. Kenobi's spirit further revealed that Leia was his twin sister. Luke surrendered himself to Vader on the forest moon of Endor, hoping to turn him from the dark side, and was brought before the Emperor aboard the second Death Star.

Goaded toward anger, Luke briefly gave in and overpowered Vader, but stopped himself before striking the killing blow, casting his lightsaber aside and declaring himself a Jedi like his father before him. As the Emperor tortured him with Force lightning, the last of the good in Anakin Skywalker rose up, and Vader threw his master into the station's reactor shaft, dying of his wounds soon after. Luke escaped the Death Star with his father's body and burned it on Endor, where he saw Anakin's redeemed spirit stand alongside those of Kenobi and Yoda.

Rebuilding the Jedi Order#

With the Empire broken, Luke set out to restore the Jedi Order that his father's generation had seen destroyed. He gathered students, including for a time the foundling Grogu, and eventually trained his nephew Ben Solo, the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. The effort ended in catastrophe when Ben, corrupted by the dark side, turned against his master, destroyed the new temple, and became the dark warrior Kylo Ren.

Blaming himself for his nephew's fall and for the deaths of his students, Luke withdrew from the galaxy entirely. He exiled himself to the remote ocean world of Ahch-To, the site of the first Jedi temple, cutting himself off from the Force and resolving that the Jedi should end with him.

Ahch-To and Crait#

Years later the scavenger Rey found Luke on Ahch-To and pressed him to train her and to rejoin the fight against the First Order. He resisted, haunted by his failure with Ben Solo, until the spirit of Yoda appeared to him and reminded him that failure was itself among the greatest of a teacher's lessons. Reconciled to his past, Luke reached out across the galaxy with the Force.

As the Resistance made its last stand at the Battle of Crait, Luke confronted Kylo Ren in person, holding him in a duel while the survivors escaped. Only afterward did Ren realize he had been fighting a projection cast from Ahch-To, the effort of which exhausted Luke utterly. Spent, Luke watched the twin suns of the world set and became one with the Force, dying at around fifty-three years of age. His example endured to inspire Rey and a new generation of Jedi.