Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Mark Hamill explains exactly why Luke went into hiding

'Believe me, you're going to see lots of conflict in The Last Jedi. That is for sure'

The Last Jedi's Luke Skywalker isn't the one you remember.

Fans will already have known something was up when Rey landed on Ach-To to return Luke Skywalker his lightsaber, only for Luke to turn around and present her with a grim, silent look.

The Force Awakens had already hinted at the disaster which had crossed Luke's path; Han and Leia's son Ben Solo turned to the dark side, slaughtered the rest of the students at Luke's Jedi Academy, and took on the moniker Kylo Ren.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Mark Hamill revealed that Ben's betrayal cut deeper than might have previously been thought: Luke saw him as something of a successor, wanting to become the Obi-Wan Kenobi to his Luke.

"[Luke] made a huge mistake in thinking that his nephew was the chosen one, so he invested everything he had in Kylo, much like Obi-Wan did with my character," Hamill stated. "And he is betrayed, with tragic consequences. Luke feels responsible for that."

"That’s the primary obstacle he has to rejoining the world and his place in the Jedi hierarchy, you know? It’s that guilt, that feeling that it’s his fault, that he didn’t detect the darkness in him until it was too late."

However, it's clear that Luke's guilt is only touching the surface here, as hinted in his ominous words in the trailer: "I only know one truth. It's time for the Jedi to end..."

It's a change in attitude that Hamill certainly struggled with: "When I first read it, my jaw dropped. What would make someone that alienated from his original convictions? That’s not something that you can just make up in an afternoon, and I really struggled with this thing."

"There’s massive amounts of backstory that is left to your imagination and I couldn’t do my job without figuring out what that was," the actor added. "Since it’s not really important to the main story as a whole a lot of it is just for my own process. I talked with Rian about it and went into this elaborate scenario of what happened to Luke after the end of the Return of the Jedi."

It's that internal conflict that means Rey will have a steely reception in The Last Jedi, and the rejection is about to hit Rey hard. Those abandonment issues aren't going to get any better. "Believe me, you're going to see lots of conflict in The Last Jedi. That is for sure," Hamill teased.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi hits UK cinemas 14 December.