Wait, Luke Skywalker May Have Had A Wife?

Luke Skywalker

A lot of time passed between the releases of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi and Stars Wars: The Last Jedi. While fans only saw a small portion of Luke Skywalker's life during The Last Jedi, he didn't just sit on an island for over 30 years. He lived a whole life that we didn't see, likely filled with adventure, drama, and, possibly, love. It turns out that Luke may have been married at some point in his life. The novelization of The Last Jedi reportedly features a line that claims Luke had a wife before the events of the blockbuster sequel.

There may be a line in the novelization of Star Wars: The Last Jedi that reveals Luke Skywalker had a wife at one point in his life. A picture of the first line from the book was posted to Reddit and reads "Luke Skywalker stood in the cooling sands of Tatooine, his wife by his side." Obviously, due to the source and the fact that the novel does not release until March 6, we have to treat this with a grain of salt, but it is still incredibly interesting all the same. It's also important to remember that this is an out of context line, and might not mean what it appears.

As fans of the Star Wars Expanded Universe may know, Luke was married to a woman named Mara Jade. Mara was an "Emperor's Hand" and served Emperor Palpatine. She attempted to kill Luke in revenge after he defeated the Emperor, but she was mostly prompted to do so by telepathic programming from Palpatine. Luke was able to free her and the two eventually fell in love, got married, and had a child named Ben Skywalker. Mara was one of the more popular characters from the Expanded Universe, but she's yet to make the transition into the current canon.

If this does turn out to be a real line from the novel, it raises several questions. For one, who is the mysterious wife? Mara Jade would obviously be the top contender but it could be a different character. We also have to wonder at what point Luke got married and what happened to his wife? There's no mention of her in The Last Jedi, but that makes sense considering Luke is a private person in the movie and he has no reason to tell Rey, a stranger, his life story. It would be pretty distracting if it were just an off the cuff remark that is never addressed again.

We also have to consider the fact that this line could be intentionally misleading. If you scroll further down into the Reddit thread, some comments say that this is just part of a dream sequence of what Luke's life could have been like had he not gone off to blow up the Death Star. That feels pretty in line with what Rian Johnson was doing in The Last Jedi. Doesn't mean he never fell in love or even had a different wife, but he's imagining what his life could have been like instead of living alone on an island sipping green milk straight from the...whatever that thing was.

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi novel is due to release on March 6, 2018, so we'll know for sure what's going on with Luke's wife after then.

Matt Wood

Matt has lived in New Jersey his entire life, but commutes every day to New York City. He graduated from Rowan University and loves Marvel, Nintendo, and going on long hikes and then greatly wishing he was back indoors. Matt has been covering the entertainment industry for over two years and will fight to his dying breath that Hulk and Black Widow make a good couple.