Featured Image Credit: 20th Century-Fox, Lucasfilm Ltd.
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi is a bit of a divisive film, as far as Star Wars movies go at least. Granted it’s nowhere near as divisive as Disney’s sequel trilogy, but it’s definitely not held in quite the same regard as the first two films in the original trilogy.
It’s still beloved, undoubtedly, but a couple of little issues often lead people to label it as the weakest of the three original Star Wars films.
The first of these issues will likely remain divisive forever. How did the Ewoks manage to defeat the Empire’s best soldiers on Endor? You’ll just have to suspend your disbelief and get over that one. It’s a sci-fi film about people with magic laser swords, don’t think too hard about it.
The second most argued issue regarding Return of the Jedi concerns Luke’s training with Yoda on Dagobah, and thanks to The Last Jedi (of all things) we can finally explain this one.
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Luke’s training sequence on Dagobah between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi is often criticised for how short it ended up taking. Now we are sort of collectively assuming it was short (as no specific amount of time was ever stated), but many still think Yoda managing to get Luke on par with Vader so quickly is a bit far-fetched.
As noticed by ScreenRant’s Alix Batte, we finally have an answer to this qualm - and said answer is taken from the Star Wars: The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary.
In the Visual Dictionary tie-in for The Last Jedi, it’s stated that time works differently on the planet Ahch-To (the planet that Rey finds Luke on at the end of The Force Awakens).
In short, once you’re actually on the planet, time will start to pass slower than it usually would. Sort of like the opposite of that bit in Interstellar where they land on a planet where everything moves by super fast.
The Visual Dictionary then also makes a point of comparing Ahch-To to two other locations; Mortis (which is located within The Force itself) and the planet Dagobah.
So there you go, stuff moves slow on Dagobah. So nobody really knows how long Luke was training with Yoda for, which means we can just assume he was there for ages. Assumedly Yoda cut his hair at some point too.
Now, as some have pointed out, we never actually needed this explanation in the first place. The time it took Han and Leia to travel to Bespin lines up exactly with the time it takes Luke to travel to and leave Dagobah.
As the Millennium Falcon’s hyperdrive was busted during this trip, Han and Leia had to travel at lightspeed to Bespin instead. Again, no specific amount of time is stated, but it definitely took them a lot longer than it should have - potentially upwards of several weeks.
So even though the movies make it look like Luke was only on Dagobah for a short while, the films themselves let us know this wasn’t the case. Basically the extra explanation was slightly pointless, but hey, at least The Last Jedi gets points for trying.
