Like many of you, I’m sure, Luke was my hero growing up. Luke was an idealist, maybe a little naive, but always cared about doing the right thing. I really identified with that and felt I was the same way in lot of aspects.

In TLJ, Luke has clearly gotten older, and with that time Luke has made mistakes and has even fallen into a depression. He’s lost that bit of idealism he used to have, becoming a little jaded by the world.

I’ve also gotten older, and when I watched this movie, I was surprised how much I still related to Luke. While I’m not as old as Luke is, I’ve also come to regret my naivety a little. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, things that have really made me hate myself at times, like hurting people I care about. Things that totally felt out of character for me, things I know better than to do, that despite how much I care about the people I love, than I can still fail them. But, seeing Luke deal with the same thing, but be able to look through that fog of depression and find hope that he can try to make things right and be who he always was meant to be, it gave me that little bit of hope that despite my own failures, it isn’t too late for me to be better too.

Maybe this won’t resonate for everyone, but I like to think that for the people who are most like Luke when he was young, who will come to realize how the world can come crashing down on idealists and leave them in a place like older Luke was in, will get it. So to me, TLJ Luke is exactly who he needs to be for certain people going through similar things as he’s going through, just like how OT Luke was a surrogate for many kids who related to him. So maybe that won’t work for everyone and I understand that, but it totally works for me. Because to me, that’s what Luke’s character is suppose to be about. Hope. Not just hope for the world, but hope for oneself. And I think what Luke goes through has to be big, because it needs to be something where someone can go, “Well if Luke can get back up after THAT, then maybe I can too.”