By Michael Briers
A collection of myths and tall tales about the legendary Luke Skywalker, all of which are designed to fill in some of the gaps between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
Told through the eyes of a young spaceship crew, that means those stories skate the line between truth and hearsay.
The Legends of Luke Skywalker provides some welcome context to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, with one excerpt, in particular, pointing to Luke’s alleged involvement in the Battle of Jakku.
The remnants of that conflict were littered throughout The Force Awakens, with Rey (Daisy Ridley) seeking shelter in a downed AT-AT.
But it seems Skywalker had a presence in said battle, as in Ken Liu’s “The Starship Graveyard,” a young crew member recounts a story she first heard from an Imperial officer who had fought under Emperor Palpatine:
"I did not see any rebel star cruisers that could have launched the beams. In fact, the shots all seemed to terminate in the steadily spinning hologram of the Jedi, his machine of death, that red-striped X-wing, hovering over him like a trained bird of prey or a magician’s familiar."
Star Wars Novel Claims Luke Is Able To Down Entire Star Destroyers
A claim that Mark Hamill’s wayward Jedi is able to down entire Star Destroyers using only the Force. Remember those sun-kissed metal corpses scattered across the Jakku desert? Turns out Luke may have been the one responsible for bringing the Empire’s fleet out of the sky.
A member of the Galactic Empire bears witness to Luke’s devastating power:
"The bridge went dark. The overhead lights, the view screens, the blinking lights on the banks of consoles. Even the emergency lighting strips on the floor. All around us was the darkness of space…I saw that the bridge windows were rapidly filling with expanding columns of energy… A jolt, as if the entire Star Destroyer had been picked up by a giant hand and slammed against the ground. The ship slowed, drifted, stopped and then the stark lifeless surface of Jakku swung into view, filling the windows, and we fell, we fell."
The finer details of Luke Skywalker’s self-imposed exile remain stowed away.
