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Commander Igar is the name of the guy who turned Luke over to Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. And the story leading up to that moment evokes murder bears, mad wizards, and the concept of destiny versus choice. Punch it!
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Raw Episode Transcript:
Hey, Rebel Rouser, I’m Allen Voivod, and this is Star Wars 7 by 7, your daily dose of Star Wars joy. Thank you so much for joining me for it. The Man Who Captured Luke Skywalker is another short story in the Return of the Jedi 40th anniversary collection. This one is about the guy that you would expect it to be about. It’s the guy who brought Luke to Darth Vader later and said he was armed only with this and hands over the lightsaber. Basically, you get the story of how it is that Luke arrived in that guy’s company.
I like this story. I enjoyed it for a number of reasons. First of all, we’ve got this particular commander out in the woods with a squad of troopers. They’re looking for a missing squad of troopers, and it’s basically the murder bear scenario from Battlefront 2, which my kids have told me is absolutely terrifying, trying to move around in the forest at night and the Ewoks all trying to kill you. Basically, they’re talking about how the forest basically makes people disappear and doesn’t even leave any bones behind. People are spooked by these Ewoks.
Then there’s the story that this commander, Igar, tells to Luke when Luke arrives just out of nowhere. He’s just suddenly there and everybody’s like, What the heck? He tells him about how during the Clone Wars, he was actually part of the Republic and followed a Jedi on an attack against a Separatist fortress that was absolutely ridiculously fortified and couldn’t be hit with orbital bombardment for any good use. And he says only a mad wizard would have led the charge against a fortress like that that happened. No general, no anyone would have done that. And so, yeah, that was an interesting story for getting a little background detail on the character.
And it leads to a conversation between Luke and this commander about the nature of the force and the Jedi. The commander is saying that… This is a great line, by the way, to the effect that the Force is like destiny as a devouring mouth. Whereas Luke is saying that the will of the Force is actually about making choices. It’s about having the power of choice. It is interesting that when you hear Dark Siders talk about the Force, it really does seem like destiny gets wrapped up in it a lot, right? Like, Darth Vader telling Luke that it’s his destiny to join him, that thing.
And the reason why Igar and Luke have enough time to talk is because Igar mentions that they’re looking for a squad, and Luke says, Yeah, well, accidents happen. I met your squad. They’re all dead. I can show you where they are if you like. Which is like, which is like, Why did he do that? And then he tells Igar that he chased them down with a speeder. That suggests that this was a whole other engagement unrelated to the mess that Han and Chewie, or actually, Han, really, that Han got the group into in Return of the Jedi, what we saw on screen. It seems like this is a separate thing that happened when Luke left and was trying to make his way to find some Imperials to get captured. Why did he have to kill a bunch of troopers? I don’t know, unless it was just self-defense, which is probably more likely the case. But I guess he needed to get to an officer to make it a situation where he could be captured and not just attacked and killed.
And the story ends, and because this has been out for almost two months now, I’ll give you the spoiler version. The spoiler version has Igar leaving the platform, but taking his time just long enough so that when he gets in the elevator, Vader says to Luke, whatever, and Luke says, “I know, Father.” You hear Igar hearing that Luke calls Vader, “Father.” Yet another person knows this deep, dark secret in the galaxy. But it’s also a thing that is going to mess with Igar’s worldview as well, because as you go through the story and the way he’s thinking about the Force and destiny, and Luke says he just wants to help Vader, and that’s why he’s turning himself in to like, yeah, this is a really thoughtful story, and I enjoyed it very much.
That is The Man Who Captured Luke Skywalker in the 40th anniversary short story collection for Return of the Jedi. That’s going to do it for this episode of the podcast. It just remains for me to say thank you so much for joining me for it as always. And may the Force be with you wherever in the world you may be.