‘If you want Luke Skywalker to be gay, he is’

Over the course of nearly 50 years, Mark Hamill has heard every question about Star Wars you could possibly ask the actor behind Luke Skywalker. But there’s a burning question he’s heard most often since the first movie swept the world in 1977: “Why didn’t Luke get married?” Which, according to Hamill, is often followed up with: “Is Luke gay?”

On a recent phone call with Hamill, I didn’t need to pry to find out his go-to answer. He has a clear take on a topic that so many actors in similar positions would never in a million years take a stance on, out of fear of alienating their four-quadrant audiences. Without even a pause, Hamill asserts that because George Lucas didn’t delve into Luke’s sexuality in the text of his films, the answer is whatever a given viewer wants it to be, and will remain that way forever.

“So if you want him to be gay, he is,” Hamill says. “If you don’t want him to be, he’s not. It’s whatever you want.”

Hamill has confronted Luke’s unconfirmed sexuality over the years, most prominently in 2016, as he prepared for his return in The Last Jedi during an era when conversations over the lack of LGBTQ+ characters in mainstream media like Star Wars were arguably at their peak. Ten years later — through a barrage of culture-war discourse, triumphant wins by proactive creators, an attack on Disney by right-leaning political factions over queer themes and characters, and backtracking by the conglomerate over representation in its media, even by the likes of the more progressive-minded Pixar — Hamill hasn’t wavered.

The same can’t be said for Lucasfilm, which helped define Luke Skywalker’s sexuality in the Expanded Universe back in the 1990s. Beloved by many a Star Wars novel reader, Mara Jade was introduced in Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire, evolving from an Emperor-aligned assassin into Luke’s eventual partner and wife.

Image: Marvel

Since The Walt Disney Company reset Star Wars canon following its acquisition of Lucasfilm, however, Jade’s absence has become a persistent point of friction within the fandom — especially as other legacy elements have been selectively reintroduced. But even earlier this month, at MegaCon 2026, Zahn and author Claudia Gray publicly confirmed that Lucasfilm has firmly rejected attempts to reinsert Mara Jade into canon. The result is a persistent discourse that frames Jade as a deliberate omission of a fan favorite, though one that carries particular weight, given her defining role in cementing a heterosexual endgame for Luke. She’s a can of worms.

Whatever role Hamill’s stance on Luke has played in that restriction is unclear. But he isn’t brushing off fans, or being ambiguous about the character. If anything, he’s thinking more deeply about the meaning of Luke than ever. The character remains an icon fans can latch onto even beyond sexual identity.

“When they talk about the movies, they relate it to how they saw it,” Hamill says. “You know, ‘My parents were going through a divorce, and I’d escape and watch the movies on videotape over and over.’ Or, ‘It helped get me over the death of my dog.’ They personalize it, in a way. And you realize, it’s wonderful to be part of something that’s important to their childhood. Because now they’re grownups with kids of their own, and it’s sort of a generational thing. They pass it on.”

Hamill believes the Rorschachian nature of Star Wars has everything to do with Lucas’ aim for timelessness. “[The movies are] not easily dated,” which has become clearer to him over the past five decades. Kids who only discovered the original Star Wars trilogy in the last 10 or 20 years are shocked to learn Hamill, now 74 years old, is Luke. “I’ll be at an airport and grownups will say to their kids, ‘Look, it’s Luke Skywalker,’ and they’ll look up at me and they’re aghast! Like, ‘Oh my God, this guy really let himself go.’ They have no concept of time.”

Image: Lucasfilm Ltd.

Star Wars fans’ ability to build their own logic on top of the movies never ceases to amaze Hamill. Even the lives (and deaths!) of minor characters like Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen got under viewers’ skins in ways the actor could never have imagined. But there is one point of contention Hamill himself has over Luke’s identity: One thing he delighted in while shooting Return of the Jedi in 1982 that still makes him chuckle today.

“They brought Carrie [Fisher] and me into a room and they said, “In this movie, we’re going to discover that Luke and Leia are brother and sister.” And there was silence. And then I said, “Well, wait a minute, if I’m Leia’s brother and she’s a princess, does that make me royalty?” And Carrie went, “No,” right away. I went, “OK, I’m just asking!”

Hamill says Fisher was “very protective of her royal status because she was virtually the only woman in the films,” and that the question of Luke’s heritage became their on-set joke.

“I wouldn’t let it go. I’d say, weeks later, ‘I don’t know, Lord Vader… Queen Amidala… Princess Leia. I mean, even though I didn’t know my identity, you’d think that it would make me some sort of royalty.’ She’d say, ‘Get over it! You’re not royalty!’”

Luke Skywalker: Gay if you want him to be, but absolutely not royalty — unless you want to defy Carrie Fisher.

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