I saw this over on the Star Wars subreddit, and I wonder what people think:
Ben was being drawn to the dark side by Snoke. Luke had sensed this in him and went to confront him. He looked inside Ben and saw a vision that Snoke had already turned Ben and he would bring destruction and the end of everything he loved, so Luke in the briefest moment of instinct turned on his lightsaber.
I think the thing that makes it so hard to swallow this scene for many people is that it still doesn’t really look like instinct, despite what Luke says. There’s a bit too much telling here and not enough showing. I think if they had actually shown us Luke’s vision of Ben destroying everything, it might’ve helped put us in his shoes and understand why his instinct was to turn on that lightsaber. It’s made clear that this vision was very bad, so actually showing us that vision would help us clear up that it was just a brief moment of temptation and that Luke wasn’t actually going to follow through and kill Ben.
I still think it’s explained well enough, but the “show, don’t tell” rule exists for a reason, so I think they could’ve done a better job with this scene regardless.
So, this commentator is suggesting that, during Luke’s flashback scene where he reveals that, out of instinct, he ignited his lightsaber… to actually show the atrocities that Luke saw when he looked into Ben’s mind.
Perhaps it would be possible to use some of Rey’s flashback sequence from The Force Awakens during this brief scene to really sell the “instinctual” reason why Luke ignited his lightsaber.
Thoughts?
I’ve had this idea too. I would use bits from TFA and TLJ (perhaps even IX) and cut together a short distorted little nightmare vision that would cause Luke to ignite his saber almost in self defense.
One concern I have is that I imagine it can’t be too clear. I don’t know how looking at the future like that works in canon but I think the vision would have to almost imply things rather than clearly showing them. Like maybe it could show Kylo wearing a helmet and having a red saber, but I don’t think it could show exactly how the helmet or saber looks.
Anyway, that will be a fun thing to experiment with.