The presents have been opened, the turkey all eaten and we’ve settled into a relaxing holiday haze until New Year’s kicks us out of it. It seems like the perfect time to be re-watching Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where you’re definitely going to find homages to the previous films. Here’s a roundup of our Top 10, warning the Force is strong with spoilers. If you’re like me and you’re marathoning the series (check out our Rogue One Easter Eggs and everything we learned from re-watching Rogue One). Onward!
Luke’s Compass
Luke didn’t bring much with him to Ahch-To, but among the knick-knacks scattered on his shelf is a compass that might look familiar to video game fans. Luke stole that device from an Imperial stronghold in Star Wars Battlefront II, and it’s implied that the compass helped him locate the original Jedi temple. Star Wars Battlefront 2, tells the story of how Luke finds the compass just after the destruction of the second Death Star. This is the tool which then helps him discover the location of the first Jedi Temple on Ahch-To in the first place, so it’s no wonder that he’s kept it ever since.
Gold Dice
The gold dice that Luke finds in the Millennium Falcon (and later hands to Leia) are the dice that Han Solo used to win the Falcon from Lando Calrissian in a game of Corellian Spike in A New Hope all those years ago. In The Last Jedi, Luke takes it as a memento to remember his old friend by, but it’s more than likely the trinket will appear again in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which will reportedly show how that famous sabacc game between Han and Lando actually unfolded.
Twin Suns
During Luke’s final moments in The Last Jedi, he peers out at the vista before him, as Ahch-To’s twin suns paint the sky with a warm orange glow. This a bittersweet homage to Luke’s humble beginnings in A New Hope. When he looks out towards Tatooine’s own pair of suns, yearning to discover adventure beyond the mundanity of his life as a farm boy. Oh, Luke, you’ve had a good run and now your journey has come to an end… no, you’re crying!
Lifting Rocks
While training Rey in the ways of the Jedi, Luke sarcastically mentions that the Force is about more than lifting rocks. Clearly, Luke still harbors some resentment towards Master Yoda, who made Luke stack rocks with the Force while they trained on Dagobah. Of course, Rey ends up lifting a pile of stones during The Last Jedi‘s final moments, making boulder-levitation an unofficial Jedi rite of passage–whether Luke likes it or not.
Luke’s X-Wing
Once again, Luke has managed to flood and submerge his X-wing beneath the waters of Ahch-To, similar to how he did so in Dagobah’s swamp during The Empire Strikes Back. Rey finds it near the shores, looking completely out of use, but apparently, the man must have had to time to salvage it for parts at some point, as the front door of his hut is made out of a piece of the ship’s exterior. Luke must have learned this from his former teacher, Yoda since the little green guy also used his escape pod from Revenge of the Sith as the basis for his cabin home on Dagobah.
Mark Hamill Plays Two Characters
As the credits roll for #TheLastJedi, note the extra roll credited to Mark Hamill as “Dobbu Scay”. Haven’t found the significance/meaning yet. pic.twitter.com/PNLCOxIY7w
— Doug Bowman (@stop) December 15, 2017
In The Last Jedi, Mark Hamill didn’t just play Luke Skywalker but at the end we see him credited with playing a character called Dobbu Scay. The space leprechaun who was trying to shove coins into BB-8 as a slot machine. (Dobbu Scay is an anagram for Star Wars editor Bob Ducsay).
“Mark Hamill came to Rian (Johnson). Mark’s done an awful lot of computer game voices for characters, but he’s never had the chance (to do mo-cap). So, he said, ‘I want to put the dots on, man. I want to do that mo-cap thing.’ Rian made a little cameo for Mark. We brought him after the main shoot to our ILM and performance capture stage in London. We spent an afternoon with him, staging those moments with Rian. That was quite bizarre.”
Hyperspace Tracking
In Rogue One, Jyn Erso infiltrates an Imperial base on Scarif to search a database for the Death Star plans she stumbles upon something called “Hyperspace Tracking” in the Empire‘s files. In other words, it turns out the Empire had been attempting to crack this technological conundrum for quite some time, though judging from the events of the original trilogy, they never figured it out. Luckily for the dark side, the First Order must have finished the work their predecessors started, before finally putting it to use during the events of The Last Jedi.
In Memory of Raddus
The Resistance’s main cruiser (the one which Holdo uses to blow up the First Order’s destroyer) is called The Raddus, which is actually named after a character we met in Rogue One. Admiral Raddus was the captain of the Profundity: the cruiser which Jyn Erso transmitted the Death Star plans to during the fight on Scarif. Sadly, Raddus perishes alongside the rest of his crew after Darth Vader boards the Profundity to retrieve those aforementioned plans, but it looks like the Resistance never forget his valiance, and has commemorated him by naming their very own cruiser in his honour.
The Barash Vow
The new Darth Vader series from Marvel Comics explores the journey of Anakin Skywalker and how he came to be Darth Vader. In the comic, there is the story of Jedi Master Kirak Infil’a, who is in self-imposed exile after taking what is referred to as the Barash Vow. Jedi take the vow when their purpose is unclear or if they’ve violated the code. They isolate themselves “inside the Force” until a purpose for them arises. That’s the state that Luke is in when Rey first encounters him in the movie.
The Beastie Boys Cameo
It’s not a Rian Johnson film without a Joseph Gorden-Levitt cameo. But your favourite Looper may be a little hard to spot. If you remember in The Last Jedi, there’s an alien named Slowen-Lo, the aristocrat who rats Finn and Rose out to the authorities on Canto Bight. A cute cameo but the names themselves are interesting.
The name Slowen-Lo is itself a reference to “Slow and Low”, a Beastie Boys song, making this the third Star Wars character to be named in homage to the group. The other two are Ello Asty (“Hello Nasty”) and Illco Munica (“Ill Communication”) both of whom appeared in The Force Awakens. JJ Abrams is a big Beastie Boys fan.