Of Course Luke Skywalker Is A Badass, You Fucking Idiots

For those of you who have been participating in our chat room on GroupMe, first of all, cool! Thanks for participating! We love interacting with our fans and shooting the shit throughout slow work days.

A quick aside for those who aren’t in the chat room, we have an official Mouthy Broadcast chat room on the GroupMe app. It’s essentially a group text with friends, but your phone number remains anonymous, and you can do cool stuff like attach GIFs and private message other group members. If you like the show, and want to “hang out” with us during the day, download the GroupMe app and stop by our chat room! It may seem overwhelming at first with all of the notifications from people posting and “liking” posts, but you can easily turn off notifications and check in and chat when you have the time.

So, we discuss many things in the chat room. Since it is an extension of our show, the topics of conversation tend to be humorous poop stories, random Fuck/Marry/Kill challenges, and discussions of our mutual interests. One day, Star Wars came up in the chat room. Full disclosure: I love Star Wars, it was a staple of my childhood, it sparked my imagination as a kid, hated the prequels, loved JJ’s comeback, The Force Awakens“… yadda, yadda, yadda. You’ve heard this story before. So, yeah, I get a little passionate when talking about Star Wars, and it’s not one of those things that I can just shrug off when someone says something wrong about it or states a stupid fan theory.

For much of the summer last year, I kept having to explain to people how not only would there be no way that Luke was really Kylo Ren in the movie, but also how he wouldn’t even be Dark Side at all. It would have negated his entire character arc from the previous trilogy and Return of the Jedi, specifically. The pivotal moment in ROTJ is when Vader finally goads Luke into giving into his anger, Luke goes apeshit on Vader, Luke cuts off Vader’s arm with his lightsaber, Luke looks at Vader’s chopped off robot limb, looks at his own robot hand that was given to him after Vader chopped his off, realized that he was doing exactly what the Emperor wanted, so he threw down his lightsaber and said, “I’ll never turn to the Dark Side. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” CHARACTER ARC COMPLETED. Having him even have a smidge of Dark Side in him in the new trilogy would have been a cheap shock tactic and completely piss on the character they spent three movies building. So, yeah, to see, “Well, he may or may not be Kylo Ren, but I think he’s turned to the Dark Side” posted in Star Wars threads on Facebook sent off nerd rage and my literary theory rage. Have we been so abused as an audience that we now expect cheap plot twists that make no sense?

I digress. This is really about another Luke Skywalker argument. Recently in our GroupMe chat, the conversation headed into Star Wars territory as it is wont to do in a room full of nerds. One of our listeners compared Luke’s appearance at the end of The Force Awakens to that of a pedophile. Jennie, Lauren, and myself were equally aghast. Was this guy trolling? Nope, he continued his insistence that Luke looked like a pedophile. Now, I know there isn’t a stereotypical version of what a pedophile should look like, but in my head, it would look more like the Pornstache guy in Orange Is The New Black or half of the characters Steve Buscemi plays. When I saw the end of Episode VII, I saw a weathered, contemplative Jedi Master but who looked much more mystical and powerful given the 30 year history between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. We know little “confirmed” information of what happened to Luke between the two films. Han Solo fills in the most gaps: Luke started to train a new generation of Jedi, Supreme Leader Snoke seduced one of his students, Ben Solo, to the Dark Side and christened him Kylo Ren, Luke felt immense guilt about this and exiled himself. When asked where Luke went, Han speculated that he went searching for the first Jedi Temple. It’s safe to assume that even if Luke didn’t find the first Jedi Temple, he still would have trained more and honed his powers with The Force, to ensure that he wouldn’t fail another like he did with Kylo Ren. Was Kylo Ren Luke’s fault? Han and Leia blame Snoke, and I’m inclined to agree. However, I can see why Luke would feel the burden of this consequence. Here he was, trying to restore the Jedi knights when he was the lone survivor, and since he never received “proper” Jedi training, he felt he might have fucked up somewhere along the way and Kylo Ren was the result.

So, after presenting my argument that Luke didn’t look like a pedophile and instead looked like a hardened Jedi badass, some members of the chat room began to question Luke’s badassness. They said, “Maybe Jabba’s barge, but that’s about it.” Um, totally Jabba’s barge, but also his palace. Yeah, Luke fell into a trap, but he handled the Rancor like a boss. Later in the film, Luke WILLINGLY turns himself into Vader, confident that there was still good in his father and that he would not be harmed. I see this as another side of badassness. The Luke Skywalker we met in “A New Hope” wouldn’t have done so, and if he did, he would have been a lot more reckless about it.

Anyway, the Broads felt it was time to move on to a different subject since we were going nowhere with that, but some persisted despite our plea. Here’s where I want to state some ground rules, most of which are mentioned by Lauren in episode 117 of the show. It’s our chat room, we are the mods, so it’s our rules. We’re all about freedom of speech, but if we want to move on to a different topic, please do so. Also, keep in mind that there are other people in the chat room whose lines may be farther or shorter away from ours. So, if someone else mentions that the current topic of conversation is making them uncomfortable, please respect their wishes and move on. While Jennie, Lauren, and I have pretty strong stomachs, we don’t always want to hear about your dicks or imaginary incestuous threesomes with twins. Bring up whatever you want in the chat room, that’s the point of it, to bullshit with us throughout the day about anything. We don’t want to censor anyone. Just please respect our decision to move on to a different subject if we feel the need to.

And I realize that getting offended over whether or not Luke Skywalker is a badass is extremely nerdy. But come on, that’s one of my childhood heroes. Don’t call him a pedophile.

To end this on a more positive note, how fucking excited are we all to see Luke Skywalker in full Jedi Master mode in Episode 8? He’s the most powerful person in the galaxy, maybe the most powerful Jedi ever, and the First Order has spared no expense in trying to wipe him out. I’m so excited to see how Luke handles this situation when he comes out of exile, and the confrontation between him and his nephew after the events of “The Force Awakens” might possibly be the heaviest scene in the franchise, emotionally.

Just remember, we are all in chat to chill out and get to know each other. Spirited debate is great but be respectful of everyone else’s boundaries.