swan2swan:

You know what really would have been something special in The Last Jedi but wasn’t included because it would have both given Rey character and given the audience a second to breathe?

If Luke had asked Rey what stories she had heard about him.

And she tells him that she’s heard so many, because he’s THE Luke Skywalker, but she knows a lot of them are myths. She’s pretty sure he blew up the Death Star but doesn’t think he blew up both, she doubts he moved a planet and knows there’s no way he rode a Sando Aqua Monster (“That one’s true, actually.”), but of course the most popular and mysterious one is about how he single-handedly killed Darth Vader and the Emperor.

Because everyone knows that story.

No one knows exactly how it happened, but they know Luke Skywalker went into the Emperor’s throne room with Darth Vader present and that both of them perished there. Some tales eventually began to say that Darth Vader was actually Luke Skywalker’s father, and that the two of them worked together to kill the Emperor, and then Luke Skywalker killed Vader in order to free the galaxy.

But the one Rey says she likes the most is one where Luke tried to save Vader, where he tried to bring him back, where they killed the Emperor but Vader was badly wounded, taking a fatal blow meant for his son. She likes it because it means that family matters, that people can be heroes even if no one else believes.

And Luke is astonished to see that someone is here who is not only powerful, but hopeful. And it’s not naivete, because she’s correct. And after years of people calling him the Emperor’s Bane, after years of people rejecting him once they learned of his heritage, after so much time spent in isolation believing that people would only want him back to bring a fiery sword upon the evildoers of the galaxy, here is a girl who gets it.

And finally, the Last Jedi knows that he can return.