Just when you thought Disney and Lucasfilm had finally pivoted away from the extended Skywalker clan after J.J. Abrams’ The Rise of Skywalker drew the nine-movie arc to a close, along comes the season 2 finale of The Mandalorian to send the internet into meltdown and open up a whole host of new storytelling possibilities.
The de-aging technology may have been pretty ropey, but fans didn’t care, because not only did vintage Original Trilogy era Luke Skywalker return, but he sliced and diced his way through an entire battalion of Dark Troopers, came face to face with Din Djarin and even walked away with Baby Yoda in his arms for good measure.
Inevitably, this has sparked intense speculation that Luke could become an integral part of the small screen mythology moving forward, and a new fan theory claims that the Ahsoka Tano show may be the catalyst to retcon one of the most unpopular narrative decisions from the already divisive The Last Jedi.
In the eyes of many people, Episode VIII went completely against Luke’s established characterization, turning the galaxy’s shining beacon of hope into a bitter old man who wanted nothing to do with anyone or anything he’s ever believed in, something that Mark Hamill admitted he wasn’t too thrilled about.
The live-action Ahsoka already occupies the narrative middle ground between Luke and his father, having served as Anakin’s Padawan before pointing Grogu in the direction of other Jedi in The Mandalorian, and this theory says that she could warn Luke about the dangers of carrying on the legacy of the Jedi.
As explained over on Reddit:
I posit that Ahsoka will cross paths with Luke and Grogu at some point during her season- possibly spanning two episodes. The first part of their meeting is complete chill-inducing awesomeness. Anakin’s Padawan meeting his son, who redeemed him. Just imagining Filoni getting to tell that story is incredible. So warm fuzzies all around until Ahsoka is ready to move on to continue her mission. Luke asks her to stay/return to work with him to rebuild the Jedi and Ahsoka is NOT down, and warns Luke about what sucked about the Jedi and even worse, that what Grogu and her survived could easily happen again. In a tragic bit of irony, Luke defies Ahsoka’s warnings just like she always defied his father’s, because we know he did rebuild a Jedi Temple. So, when said temple is destroyed by Kylo Ren (& others?) Luke is equally destroyed. He played a part in losing his nephew to the dark side. He couldn’t protect the other students in his care. Worst of all, he was warned by someone who knew better ~20 years earlier. That’s why he walks away from being a Jedi and eventually cuts himself off from the force. He was belatedly heeding Ahsoka’s warning as penance.
Canonically, we know that Luke starts his own Academy before Ben Solo’s emerging Dark Side powers slowly begin his transformation into Kylo Ren and force his uncle into exile, but there’s clearly plenty of ground to cover in between The Mandalorian and The Force Awakens, and Ahsoka could provide the connective tissue to explain how Luke turned out the way he did when we met him again in The Last Jedi.