Rian Johnson On Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi Is Luke’s Movie

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Han's (Harrison Ford) death in Star Wars: The Force Awakens came as quite a shock to Star Wars fans watching the very first sequel trilogy installment. No one really expected Lucasfilm to kill off a character as iconic as Han.

Now it seems like The Last Jedi's done the same thing, taking away Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) after successfully saving the Resistance in Crait. However, instead of leaving fans feeling defeated, Luke's passing leaves fans with reignited hope – a feeling that Johnson admits that he was going for when he wrote the script for The Last Jedi.

"Well, I debated it a lot, but it was always in my head that always made sense to me for a lot of different reasons," the director said in a discussion with Uproxx. "First of all, this is Luke's movie. Mark gives a great performance in it. His journey back to taking on the mantle of the legend of Luke Skywalker, basically — something he had rejected as being unhealthy for the universe. And him coming around to realizing that the galaxy needs this — 'I need to be the legend they need me to be,' and taking that on his shoulders."

After returning to the Resistance to give them the hope he needs, Luke bows out, letting the franchise move on to a new set of heroes.

"Once he does that and comes back and does this heroic act that's going to resonate throughout the universe, the notion that then that's the moment to give him his final bow. And that's the most emotionally potent time to do that made a lot of sense," Johnson went on explaining. "And, honestly, thinking about the number of characters we have on our plate going into the next movie — and I'm not working on the script for IX with J.J. [Abrams] and Chris [Terrio] and I want to be totally clear I don't know what they're doing – but it just vaguely seemed good to me that putting Luke in another realm could open possibilities for his possible involvement in the next one. As opposed to him just being another character that had to be juggled into the plot, if that makes sense."

Johnson might have come from the indie scene, but he's certainly learned about how to work with the Star Wars machine. We can't wait to see what he has in store for us in his new Star Wars trilogy.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is currently screening in cinemas.

Read: Rian Johnson On How The Last Jedi Prepared Him For The New Star Wars Trilogy