Luke as the villain? And you thought Jar-Jar was bad.

You’ve seen the trailers, the posters, the TV spots and the toys, yet with a week to go before The Force Awakens opens we’re still none the wiser what part Luke Skywalker will play. Chances are it’ll be an Obi-Wan style role, considering the facial fuzz Mark Hamill’s been sporting of late. Yet there are some corners of the internet where they think he may well be the villain. Some even think he’s Kylo Ren (presumably Adam Driver is there to look pretty). Worse still they even think Evil!Luke is a good thing. Let me tell you why that’d be the worst thing to happen to Star Wars since Attack of the Clones.

Cast your mind back to 1983 and Return of the Jedi. In what is arguably the best part of the whole Star Wars saga, Luke rejects the Dark Side. This isn’t some cursory rejection, one that you can go back to and reconsider. It’s wholesale and, in the context of the film, absolute. Throughout the whole of the Original Trilogy Luke had grown stronger in the Force. With that came the temptations of the Dark Side. Not only that, but finding out that Vader is his father at the end of Empire and that Leia is his sister would only add to that internal conflict.

By the time you get to the end of Return of the Jedi, Luke turning evil wouldn’t have been all that surprising. The scenes between Luke, Vader and the Emperor on the Death Star showcase him teetering on the edge as the Emperor employs all his tricks to try and get him to turn. Like he did with Anakin, the Emperor plays on his fears and insecurities, gambling that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. It very nearly works. Luke lashes out at the Emperor and to defeat Vader gives in to his anger to beat him into submission.

If ever Luke was to turn evil, it would have been then. After having spent nearly half the film being manipulated by the Emperor, seeing his friends dying during the Battle of Endor and beating Vader, he still rejects it. He sees what the Dark Side did to his father and how close he is to repeating that same mistake. Unlike Anakin, he’s unwilling to give in to the temptation of the Dark Side to save those he loves. He throws his lightsaber aside and chooses dying as a Jedi than living as a Sith.

“Never. I’ll never turn to the Dark Side. You’ve failed, your highness. I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

Going back on that would invalidate all of Luke’s development in the Original Trilogy. Yes the Prequels did some crappy stuff trying to link itself to the Originals (Vader building C-3PO?!) but I never felt that anything it did would negatively impact my enjoyment of Episode’s IV, V and VI. If they make Luke Skywalker a villain, then this trilogy is dead before it’s even begun.