REVOLUTION_INTERNATIONAL_VOL 58

FOUNDER’S
NOTE
ne evening late last year, after a full 12
months of COVID-related ennui, quite
definitely drunk, I sat down in front of my
computer which has become my primary
tool for communicating with the world
as well as my home entertainment center. I pressed
“Play” on the Season Two finale of The Mandalorian,
most aptly titled “The Rescue.” By the end of it, I
was sobbing like a baby, crying my ass off, but for the
first time that year, in exhilaration and joy. Because
the appearance of Luke Skywalker at the end — sorry
but if you haven’t watched it by now, then too bad —
reconnected me with something I hadn’t believed in
for a very long time: the triumph of good over evil.
Sure, there was a huge amount of nostalgia
at play. After all, here was the archetypal science
fiction/fantasy hero, a modern-day recasting of
both Siddhartha Gautama and Jesus of Nazareth,
according to Joseph Campbell in his seminal book The
Hero with a Thousand Faces. More importantly, it gave
me and legions of Star Wars fans the hero that they
had always wanted and even begged for, but had been
denied since 1983’s Return of the Jedi.
In every subsequent episode, what we all wanted
was Luke in his prime, the Jedi Master on a high,
wielding his green lightsaber like Jet Li in The Legend
of the Swordsman and effortlessly Force-crushing
the Imperial minions. Instead, what we got was 40
years of alternate characters and muddled mythology
extensions which were the equivalent of your
mother serving you meatloaf when you asked for a
cheeseburger. Even worse were the most recent Star
Wars movies. The Last Jedi, in particular, recast Luke
Skywalker as a crotchety old curmudgeon who has
lost faith in the Jedis. During the press tour for this
film, Mark Hamill himself kept expressing shock
and perplexation over this character arc, oftentimes
looking as if he was caught in a bad dream from which
there was no waking.
So back to The Mandalorian. When the single
X-wing flies by the window of the Imperial ship and
enters the landing bay, I could practically hear the
collective intake of breath around the world. Watching
YouTube reaction videos, I would later realize this
was true. The following reveal of Luke Skywalker is
masterfully done, and in a short sequence lasting just
a few minutes, delivers on the unfulfilled collective
hopes and desires of fans in an extraordinary way.
First, a mysterious cloaked figure wielding a
lightsaber is revealed on black and white security
footage. (How funny that for all their planetdestroying
capability, Imperial starships use the
equivalent of nanny cams!) The next scene is a
glorious full-color reveal of a GREEN lightsaber,
which is the color of Luke’s saber from Return of
the Jedi. Then the following scene shows a gloved
right hand, alluding once again to Luke, who lost
his hand fighting Darth Vader and wore a glove over
his cybernetic replacement. Then the figure gets
into a lift. The door opens on a phalanx of seeming
undefeatable Dark Troopers, and Luke finally gets his
equivalent of Vader’s Rogue One hallway scene where
he simply obliterates the troopers using a combination
of his mad lightsaber skills and the Force. He even
Force-crushes the final trooper in a final flourish of
omnipotent badassitude. The doors to the cockpit
open. The figure turns off his saber and reveals
himself to be a digitally de-aged Mark Hamill. Finally
after almost half a century’s wait, we get what we have
been hoping for these many long unfulfilled years —
the return of Luke Skywalker in his prime and at the
height of his powers and abilities. For this, we have to
thank The Mandalorian’s creator and showrunner Jon
Favreau and his second-in-command Dave Filoni.
If you watch the fan reaction videos on YouTube,
you will understand the powerful emotions this
unleashed for so many people, who were alternately
whooping and crying throughout the entirety of this