For being the hero of the original trilogy, Star Wars certainly painted Luke Skywalker in a pretty heartless light in the very first film, as he barely seemed to care that his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru – who raised him since infancy – were reduced to charred, skeletal corpses. Luke’s lack of a meaningful reaction to seeing his adoptive parents burned to a crisp was something that wasn’t lost on Star Wars itself, and an explanation as to why he reacted this way was explained within Legends continuity.
In Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Luke Skywalker and his Uncle Owen purchase a pair of droids that were carrying vital information the Empire would have decimated their entire world to retrieve. After Luke saw a hologram meant for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he and the droids – C-3PO and R2-D2 – took off to find him. However, the Empire was able to track the droids’ to the Lars family farm, and when they couldn’t find the droids, the Stormtroopers incinerated Owen and Beru.
Luke didn’t see what happened to his aunt and uncle, just the outcome of their horrific deaths. From a distance, Luke saw their mangled skeletons still smoking from the flames that had recently engulfed them, though no tears were shed. In fact, Luke seemed even more anxious to get off-world than he had been before, as now there was no one to tell him he couldn’t go. However, as revealed in Star Wars: Legacy, his emotional turmoil was a bit more complicated than that.
Luke Skywalker Mourned Uncle Owen & Aunt Beru In His Own Time
In Star Wars: Legacy #39 by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema, the Force Ghost of Luke Skywalker is training his descendant Cade Skywalker in the ways of the light side of the Force, and he’s doing so by showing Cade the most impactful moments of his own life. Included among those was the day Luke found his aunt and uncle dead.
Luke explains that, at the time, he didn’t fully understand the love they had for him, and he didn’t appreciate everything they’d done for him all his life. Luke reveals that he mourned them later, after the call to adventure waned, and he found himself reflecting on his innermost thoughts and emotions.
Luke Needed Time To Process Own & Beru’s Star Wars Deaths
If it seemed like Luke Skywalker was perhaps more relieved than sad when he saw his adoptive parents dead, that’s because he was – to a certain degree. Luke was called upon by the Living Force to be the ‘New Hope’ the galaxy needed, as he was the only one who could turn Darth Vader back to the light side, and Vader was the only one who could redeem his past atrocities by killing his master, Emperor Palpatine. Everything inside of Luke told him to leave Tatooine, yet Owen and Beru kept him on that desert planet. For Luke, their deaths were synonymous with his freedom, and he could finally listen to that cosmic force pushing him to go and stop the Empire.
Luke wasn’t happy that Owen and Beru were dead, if anything he was just going through a complicated mix of emotions that paired with his own immaturity. Luke didn’t understand everything that Owen and Beru did for him, and he didn’t believe that they loved him enough to ever let him go off-world, despite the fact that they were planning on letting him go the very next year. Once Luke was able to process his emotions, he fully appreciated the weight of losing the only two people in the galaxy who truly loved him as their own son, and he mourned them when he was ready to do so. Luke Skywalker wasn’t emotionless or cruel in Star Wars’ first installment, he was young and conflicted, and that’s why it seemed like he barely reacted to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s deaths.
