Warning! This article contains spoilers for Star Wars #19

After his first lightsaber duel with his father, Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker suffered an injury that weakened his force strength forever. The battle between the Sith Lord and Jedi Padawan took place in the film Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back in which Luke decides to take the fight to Darth Vader in an effort to save his friends and rid the galaxy of a cosmic evil. However, Luke proves to be far too weak to take on Vader alone, and in their battle Luke loses a hand to one of Vader’s attacks, a wound that left Luke with a secret force weakness. 

In Star Wars #19 by Charles Soule and Marco Castiello, Luke Skywalker is recovering from his first battle with Darth Vader in Cloud City and is on a mission to obtain a stolen Jedi holocron from an Empire base. Luke, disguised in robes, approaches two Storm Troopers who are guarding the base and attempts to use the Jedi Mind Trick to force them into handing over the holocron. Luke does this by waving his right hand, the hand that is now robotic after losing the original to Darth Vader. The Troopers tell him to be on his way, and Luke leaves the area having failed to obtain what he was after. 

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The reason the Jedi Mind Trick didn’t work on the Storm Troopers is because of the robot hand through which Luke was trying to channel the Force. As revealed in the film Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace, the Force is a cosmic energy that can be manipulated by those with a high Midi-Chlorian count, an element in the bloodstream of the Force-sensitive person. Because Luke had his hand cut off, he had no Midi-Chlorians within his new hand and so when Luke tried to channel the Force through that hand it didn’t work even on the weak-minded Storm Troopers. 

Luke’s secret Force weakness Darth Vader cursed him with by removing his hand kept him from completing his mission in this issue, but that initial weakness turned into a strength as it ended up teaching Luke a better way to use the Force. Later in the issue, Luke returns to the Storm Troopers and instead of trying to channel the Force through his hand to use the Jedi Mind Trick, Luke simply focuses his mind to force them to give him the holocron he is after. Luke using his mind to achieve the Jedi Mind Trick instead of his hand improved his understanding of the technique and even of the Force as a whole, and Darth Vader inadvertently taught Luke this alternate way to channel the Force in the same manner as himself. After his fight with Obi-Wan in Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, all of Darth Vader’s limbs are robotic, yet he hasn’t lost any power when it comes to Force manipulation and has even grown stronger as the years went on. That is because Darth Vader knew what Luke just learned, that using one’s mind is the key to true Force manipulation and not channeling it through any one limb.

Luke Skywalker had a secret force weakness because of Darth Vader, but in the end that weakness taught him a new strength.

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