I hope it has a great second season, and maybe even a third, and then knows when to stop.
Speaking of knowing when to stop, I don't!
Let's go back to Luke and how good, rather than bad, he is in TLJ.
To start with, I'm still not sure what people *wanted* Luke to be. Was he supposed to be the Obi Wan or Yoda of this trilogy?
If so,
why? We've already had an Obi Wan and a Yoda.
If so,
how? In RoTJ Luke nearly falls twice within the same hour, first trying to strike down the Emperor in anger, and then tard raging on Darth Vader. If the Emperor hadn't started cackling about how awesome it was that Luke was about to irrevocably fall to the dark side Luke might not have decided that he'd rather not do that after all and, on second thought, he's a Jedi.
I always found that claim to be a bit of a stretch. *Aspirational,* perhaps. Sure, Yoda has told Luke that his training is complete, and that confronting Vader is his final test, but if he passed that test it was a C- at best. What Luke's really saying at that point, though it wouldn't have worked as a line, is "I'm not a Sith, and my father doesn't have to be a Sith either."
In the Universe of the Original Trilogy, that distinction would have been clear enough, even to non force-sensitive characters. Keep in mind that even though Luke has impressive talent using the force at the beginning of RoTJ, Bib Fortuna finds the idea of Luke being a Jedi laughable. To anyone with memory of the Jedi, Luke appears to be a pretender in hero's armor.
But Luke has decided what he wants to be, and he knows what he wants his father to be, and this creepy mummy man has nothing to offer or threaten him with that can make him change his mind. Stick it up your raisin ass, pal. I'm a Jedi, like my father before me.
That doesn't qualify him to start a new Jedi order. He wasn't asked to do that anyway. He was asked to pass on what he had learned.
What happened between RoTJ and TFA? Well, it's hard to say, but something got fucked. He talked to Obi Wan and Yoda a bit more, he's skimmed the ancient Jedi texts, and it turns out there's some weird rules about celibacy and denial of emotions, even though he's been searching and/or trusting his feelings a lot up to this point.
Well, he'll do his best...
So now his students, including his nephew, are now all dead or turned.
Maybe he needs to rethink some things. Maybe he wasn't ready to tackle this. Maybe he was being reckless and selfish. ("I'm endangering the mission. I shouldn't have come.")
Maybe he's not the only one with a problem, though. How long has this conflict between the Jedi and Sith been going on? A thousand generations? Are those Storm Troopers Yoda is commanding in those old recordings?
So Luke's had a lot to think about. He's got a lot of regrets and he's not the naïve farm boy he was before. He sees his attempt to set himself up as a Jedi master as an act of hubris, and he sees that same hubris reflected in Obi Wan's attempt to train Anakin, and back and back until it encompasses the entire Jedi order.
He still studies the ways of the force, but it's the life energy that binds the Galaxy together. How can anyone call himself the master of that? How can anyone ever be fully initiated into those mysteries?
Which is all well and good, but he's overcompensating. His guilt over his failure has overwhelmed him and he doesn't recognize that retreating from the universe and refusing to act is also selfish. He doesn't need to be a Jedi *master* in order to *serve* good. He needs to let go of the past in order to move forward, but he can't do it. The tree full of unread Jedi texts is his reflection, just as the cave was his reflection in TESB. After it burns, never mind if the texts were actually in there at the time, he's able to take those final steps forward.
He acts to save his friends. He encounters his former pupil, who, despite his talk about killing the past, is still consumed and compelled by it. He can kill his parents, or Snoke, or Luke. He can destroy the Falcon, the First Order, or The Resistance, but it isn't going to solve his problem, though he can't see that. Luke's last words to Kylo suggest that, as lost as Kylo is, Luke recognizes something of his own struggle in Kylo's, as well as the potential for Kylo, or Ben, to eventually find his way through it. But bitch has a *long* way to go. "See you around, Kid."
The test is over. He's passed. He opens his eyes and becomes one with the force.
There's the end of your Skywalker Saga.
