The following article contains spoilers for Episode 6 of The Book of Boba Fett "From the Desert Comes a Stranger"Chapter 6 of The Book of Boba Fett, “From the Desert Comes a Stranger,” has Star Wars fans buzzing for a variety of reasons. The return of Grogu and a beautifully deep-faked Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) are certainly at the top of the list. But some viewers were left with a bad taste in their mouth at the end when Luke presents Grogu with a heartbreaking ultimatum: Continue to train as a Jedi or return to Din Djarin, the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal).

How could Luke, who famously refused to give up on his own father, be so rigid in his following of the Jedi code? Wouldn’t he be more sympathetic to Grogu in regard to his obvious connection with his surrogate father? Given what we know about where Luke is in his character development, the main sources for his belief system, and how his story concludes, it actually makes a lot of sense.

To fully understand this topic, we need to look back at the entirety of the Skywalker Saga and examine everything we know about the Jedi and their rules about attachment.

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Image via Lucasfilm

Anakin (Hayden Christensen) explains to Padmé (Natalie Portman) in Attack of the Clones that while attachment and possession are forbidden by the Jedi, compassion and love are encouraged. But he’s a slightly unreliable source at this point because he’s still a Padawan and clearly struggling with a long-held obsession with the former Queen of Naboo.

When discussing Anakin’s premonitions in The Revenge of the Sith, Yoda (Frank Oz) tells him that attachment leads to jealousy, and to “train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.” It’s not the best advice to give a powerful Jedi who is concerned about his wife dying in childbirth, but we must assume in good faith that Yoda doesn’t know all those details. He’s simply giving cut-and-dried, fortune cookie advice based on Jedi teachings.

The Jedi of the Galactic Republic were devoted to their religion and its covenants to the point of arrogance. That hubris, directly tied to their doctrine regarding personal attachment, is ultimately responsible for the rise of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), the Empire, and Darth Vader (James Earl Jones). The narrow-mindedness of the Jedi played right into Palpatine’s hands, allowing him to gradually turn Anakin away from the light.

But that’s a harsh truth that Luke wouldn’t fully understand. At least, not yet.

When we first meet him in A New Hope, he’s a whiny farm boy daydreaming about space adventures and a sense of belonging. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke has developed a full emotional attachment to his friends, and that devotion blinds him to Yoda’s pleas and leads him right into Vader’s trap at Cloud City. Finally, in Return of the Jedi, Luke tosses aside his laser sword and declares: “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.”

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The events of The Book of Boba Fett take place around five years after Return of the Jedi, so we can only assume that Luke has spent considerable time uncovering Jedi artifacts, learning as much as he can, and becoming an even bigger Jedi fanboy. Why would he be building an academy to train a new generation of Jedi otherwise?

We know that Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), Anakin’s former apprentice, is with Luke as he begins to build his academy. Who better to provide important insight into the Jedi Order? Of course, she quit her life as a Jedi and unwittingly helped plant seeds of doubt in Anakin’s mind. Based on her complicated history with the Jedi, you might assume that Ahsoka wouldn’t be on the same page with Luke about rebooting things.

However, she did tell the Mandalorian that training Grogu was Luke’s choice, and that she wouldn't interfere with the wants of others. She also told him that she couldn’t train Grogu specifically because of their strong bond in Chapter 13 of The Mandalorian. But the most interesting thing Ahsoka said in that interaction was this:

“His attachment to you makes him vulnerable to his fear; his anger. I’ve seen what such feelings can do to a fully-trained Jedi Knight; to the best of us. I will not start this child down that path.”

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Image via Lucasfilm

When Luke asks for Ahsoka’s advice on what to do with Grogu, who he can sense may not really have his heart in it, she tells the Jedi Master to trust his instincts. Luke’s gut, at this point, clearly is with the dogma of the Jedi. He has no reason to question his belief that Grogu’s feelings for the Mandalorian put him at risk of falling to the dark side.

And is that such an unfair assumption? Recall in the first season of The Mandalorian when Djarin and Cara Dune (Gina Carano) are arm-wrestling on the Razorcrest. Grogu misinterprets the situation and begins to Force-choke Dune to protect his daddy. It underscores both his attachment to the Mandalorian and the thin line between the light and the dark when someone you care about is being threatened.

Luke’s ultimatum also jives with what we know about how his story ends, unfortunately. The Force Awakens gave us insight into the destruction of his academy, while The Last Jedi revealed the aging Skywalker as a broken shell of his former self when Rey (Daisy Ridley) seeks his help against the First Order. His own mistakes with Ben Solo (Adam Driver), compounding the mistakes of the Jedi that came before him, brought Luke to the conclusion that it was time for the Jedi to end.

As part of Rey’s second lesson, while training with Luke on Ahch-To, he gives her his painful, honest viewpoint on the Jedi.

“Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris… At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out. It was a Jedi Master who was responsible for the training and the creation of Darth Vader.”

No doubt, this is a controversial plot point that continues to divide the fanbase today. However, Star Wars is famous for finding ways to weave their many stories together into one big mythology. For Luke to become the jaded hermit we meet on Ahch-To, he must first continue to make the same mistakes as the Jedi of old. Giving Grogu the ultimatum isn’t out of character, it’s just the beginning of Luke’s imperfect journey as a Jedi Master.