Warning: Spoilers ahead for The Book of Boba Fett episode 6.
Grogu’s training under Luke Skywalker is shown in The Book of Boba Fett episode 6, but Luke presents the young Force-sensitive with an ultimatum that betrays the hopes of the late Jedi Grandmaster Yoda. With Grogu as his first student and a new Jedi academy under construction, Luke Skywalker is rebuilding the Jedi Order, but as “Chapter 6: From the Desert Comes a Stranger” and Star Wars: The Last Jedi have demonstrated, Luke perplexingly restores the Jedi Order to its prequel-era ideals. By doing this, Luke not only misses his opportunity to improve the Jedi Order, but he also fails to learn a Jedi lesson he’d mastered in Return of the Jedi and re-learned in The Last Jedi.
In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker is disillusioned with the Jedi Order, having come to understand the magnitude of their failings during the prequel trilogy era. Luke had rebuilt the Jedi Order and made no changes to their flawed ideology and restrictive lifestyle, contributing to the fall of Ben Solo, who joined the Knights of Ren, becoming Kylo Ren and taking a leadership role within the First Order. Rather than rectify his mistakes, Luke stands idly by, allowing Kylo Ren and the First Order to murder countless innocents and initially refusing to train Rey.
Toward the end of the film, Luke speaks to the ghost of Yoda, who imparts one more lesson to his old student: That they both are what the next generation of Jedi are meant to grow beyond. In Return of the Jedi, Luke did precisely this, ignoring the poor advice of Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi and embracing his attachments and emotions without being controlled by them. Luke succeeded in defeating The Emperor with his sentiment rather than his power or fighting abilities, but The Book of Boba Fett shows him forcing Grogu to choose between the Jedi and Mandalorian lifestyles, which could have and should have been compatible. Luke brought back the outdated practices of Yoda’s generation of Jedi, regressing from his characterization in Return of the Jedi but falling in line with his behavior in The Last Jedi.
As explained by Din Djarin in The Book of Boba Fett’s fifth episode, Mandalorians are defined by their attachments and emotions while Jedi shun both. Under Jedi Grandmaster Yoda’s leadership, the Jedi Order adopted these restrictive practices after previously affording Jedi a healthy amount of freedom to form attachments, express emotions, and define the Force in whatever way they felt most comfortable with. Luke Skywalker’s character trajectory in the original trilogy positioned him to rebuild a Jedi Order more akin to the High Republic era but opted to repeat Yoda’s mistakes instead.
In the Star Wars Legends timeline, Luke didn’t reestablish the Jedi Order of Yoda’s time but instead built the New Jedi Order, which respected without venerating the past generations and eschewed practices that separated Jedi Knights from the beings they were sworn to protect. The Legends-era Luke Skywalker grew beyond the foibles of Yoda’s Jedi Order and established a far more balanced definition of both Jedi Knighthood and the Force. The canon timeline’s Luke missed his opportunity to do the same thing and had to relearn his original trilogy characterization from Yoda in the sequel trilogy.
Given that Luke implies that Ben Solo was his first Jedi apprentice in other canon material, Grogu might choose to be a Mandalorian instead of a Jedi. Another possibility is that Grogu ends up being the first Mandalorian Jedi since Tarre Vizsla, finding a way to balance both lifestyles. Luke wouldn’t approve of the latter, and his failure to create a new, more balanced, form of Jedi Knighthood in The Book of Boba Fett shows that he failed to learn Yoda’s lesson of growing past the previous generation.
New episodes of The Book of Boba Fett air Wednesdays on Disney+.
