The Last Jedi, despite being an expertly crafted film, still isn't everyone's favorite. And that's okay! Even Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, has publicly admitted that he didn't love the way director Rian Johnson shaped his character in the sequel trilogy.
So much so, in fact, that the actor went to great lengths to create a devastating backstory in his own mind to help him justify Luke's headspace in the first two films in the trilogy.
On the Bullseye with Jesse Thorn podcast to promote his latest project, The Life of Chuck, Hamill revealed that backstory in full—while also admitting that he may not have phrased his feelings about Johnson's work in the best way initially.
"Rian Johnson is one of the most gifted directors I’ve ever worked with ... He’s one of my favorite directors," Hamill clarified. "He didn’t have the time to tell a backstory like that, I’m guessing. He just wanted a brief thing to explain it."
The sequel trilogy begins with the shocking revelation that Luke Skywalker is missing. It turns out that he's been isolating himself on a difficult-to-find planet for years following the destruction of his Jedi Temple. This abandonment of the rebellion and his family and friends simply didn't resonate with Hamill, who portrayed Luke in the original Star Wars films. So he did what actors do best: He imagined.
"I said, 'Can I make up my own backstory of why he is the way he is? I don’t want to just say that I have bumped my head and I have brain damage,'" Hamill recalled of a conversation he had with Johnson. "He said, 'Yeah, do whatever you want.' So I made up a much, much darker backstory that I thought could justify him being that way."
The full backstory is in the video above. In short, according to Hamill's head canon, Luke once had a wife and child whom he loved and lost quite suddenly and tragically. This sent him over the edge. He ended up disappearing on purpose. And that was what put the actor in the right mindset to portray Luke's grief and heartbreak in The Last Jedi.
Star Wars fans do this all the time. We make up things in our own heads about the stories in a galaxy far, far away that we know and love.
Hamill knows his head canon isn't real; he did what he had to do in order to get into character. And he nailed it in the final film. Even if the things we want to believe about our favorite characters and stories aren't technically canon, that's the beauty of being fans. They can be "canon" to us.