People don’t overcome their shortcomings and then never ever make them ever again for the rest of their life, though.
His mistake in this example is “seeing that his nephew will commit genocide on a scale his father never dreamed of and instinctually flicking on a lightsaber” - before immediately feeling a flood of total shame at himself in response. It’s actually a lesser mistake, considering the first time he tried to save one of his genocidal relatives he kicked the hell out of him and then cut his hand off before just barely managing to stop himself from delivering the killing blow.
Nobody solves a problem in their life once and then it stays solved forever. Even real life heroes struggle with those sorts of things. That he made that mistake (among others, including subtly succumbing to hubris and vanity) doesn’t erase his maturation as a character (especially considering the rest of the film’s characterization of Luke, and Hamill’s amazing work in bringing it depth and meaning). It complicates it, but by the end of the film’s arc, it’s enriched. Luke does something no Jedi’s ever done, not even Yoda. He only unlocks the potential and ability within himself to do that because he learns - finally - from the failures he kept incurring (as we all do) when his life continued past “happily ever after.”
His stand at the end of ROTJ was great, but that is a moment. I really feel the rest of ROTJ and the two previous films is more true to his character and insisting that he must live up to that high point of heroism at the end of ROTJ is lifting him above being human and putting him on a pedestal.
This is a really odd statement for me. How can you point to the end of a well established character arc over the course of three films, and within this film, and say: “Nah, that is just an isolated moment, that doesn’t really count? Just look at the flawed guy in TESB, that is the real Luke, who never learned from his mistakes, and will forever be the reckless boy looking to the horizon, rather than the responsible man he appeared to be at the end of ROTJ.” The isolated moment, that stands out is the Luke in Ben’s hutt, who for no apparent reason regresses back to the reckless boy looking to the horizon. It is a moment, that required context, and development, that we simply never got, and so we are left wondering why Luke, who saw the good in and hope for his father, didn’t extend the same courtesy to the son of his sister and best friend, who by then was just a young boy asleep in his bed struggling with dark thoughts? I like Luke’s arc in TLJ, but I feel the setup was rather poorly handled. It’s perfectly fine for a character to make a mistake, but as viewers we should understand the reasons for that mistake. It shouldn’t be, because the plot requires it, and we should not have to ignore the last part of a character arc to make it work. I also think, that if the premise had been well written, and developed, the vast majority of fans would have accepted it. Conversly, when a large segment of the fanbase rejects a certain premise, it is a good indication, it wasn’t handled very well.