Star Wars’ Mark Hamill Believed Returning as Luke Skywalker For Disney’s Sequels Would Be a ‘Mistake,’ But Felt Compelled After Harrison Ford Signed On

Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, has said he was initially reluctant to return in his iconic Star Wars role, believing that Disney would be unable to “catch lightning in a bottle twice.”

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter,

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Hamill admitted he had “real reservations” about agreeing to return, and believed he wouldn’t be the only one of the saga’s classic cast to turn Disney down — until he read that even Harrison Ford was coming back as Han Solo.

“I had real reservations about coming back,” Hamill said. “I thought it would be a mistake. You can’t catch lightning in a bottle twice — they should really focus on a new generation of characters. And I thought, ‘Well, Harrison is not going to do it anyway.’ You could see his irritation with constantly having to talk about Han Solo.

“Once I saw in the press that he had accepted,” Hamill continued, “I felt like I had been drafted — because if I’m the only one who says no, I’ll be the most hated man in nerd-dom.”

Hamill went on to appear as Luke Skywalker in all three of the series’ sequel trilogy movies, with a cameo at the end of The Force Awakens, a significant role in The Last Jedi, before a shorter appearance in Rise of Skywalker.

Of course, Hamill has gone onto reprise the character of Luke Skywalker again since, digitally de-aged but physically on-set for several episodes of hit Disney+ TV show The Mandalorian. When asked why the actor had felt compelled to return once more there, Hamill gave a separate reason.

“The reason I did Mandalorian was that Luke had a beginning and an end. There was no middle. It was like making a trilogy about James Bond as a young boy who first became aware of the Secret Service and wanted to be a part of it. Part two was him training to be an agent. Part three is earning his license to kill — The End. No From Russia With Love, Dr. No or Goldfinger. You never got to see Luke as a Master Jedi at the peak of his powers.”

“He was the most idealistic character in that series,” Hamill continued. “He was someone who would take adversity and double down and come back and counter his setbacks. We didn’t see any of that. So when I got the chance, I thought, ‘Geez, this is wonderful.’ I think [Mandalorian writers and directors] Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni, boy, do they get Star Wars. They get it. They’re speaking the same language that George did in a way that I questioned in the sequels.”

Reflecting on his career overall, Hamill recalled auditioning for the film version of Amadeus but not getting the part, after being told his time in a galaxy far, far away had left him typecast. “It was disappointing,” Hamill said. “But everyone has their own trajectory. I had my challenges, and other people have different challenges.

“I don’t have to be a leading man,” he concluded. “I’m happy just to be a working stiff, and that’s what I was for the longest time. All I wanted to do when I started out was make a living doing what I love to do. I didn’t want to be Tom Cruise. And, by those standards, I succeeded far beyond my expectations.”

Image credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social