Luke’s hand and Anakin’s light-saber?

[The Grumpy Celt]

Luke’s hand and Anakin’s light-saber?

This is something I have noticed before – as compared to the trouble with Luke’s X-Wing – but I have never been able to learn whether or not it is true. Even watching the scene in freeze frame and with a zoom feature, I still can not tell.

In Empire Strikes Back, when Luke falls out from under Cloud City and lands on that antenna – and incidentally totally screwing up Cloud City’s reception of the Sox in the final series – some object falls past him and into the clouds.

Is this Luke’s hand, holding his father’s (i.e. Anakin) light-saber?

It fell down the same central section of Cloud City he did, albeit before he let go of the structure to spite Vader. As such, the hand holding the light-saber could have been sucked into the same exhaust or waste removal piping that Luke got sucked into. If that happened, then when Luke was ejected from Cloud City, the hand and light-saber would also have been ejected.

As I wrote above, I have watched this scene in freeze frame and with a zoom feature and I still cannot get a good enough look at it to tell. On the one hand (pardon the pun), I have not seen Luke drop anything else on his way down. On the other hand, the hand and light-saber are not evident in the pipe he gets sucked into.

So what is it that tumbles past him, falling into the clouds?

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I'm pretty sure its the hand/lightsaber. Probably got stuck on something and didn't fall until things moved.

 

[billd91]

I don't know what falls with Luke for certain, but don't forget that Vader threw a fair amount of debris at Luke that was subsequently sucked out by the pressure differential when Luke flew out the window. Sure, you don't see any of that in the tunnel, but, as Harrison Ford said when Mark Hamill was worried about the continuity of having neatly combed hair after the trouble in the trash compactor, "Relax, kid. It ain't that kind of movie." I think that principle applies here as well.

 

[OregonGM]

I always figured it was a chunk of the weathervane/antenna.

 

[RangerWickett]

It can't be his hand, because in a Star Wars game I ran, the heroes ended up fighting a droid with a force shield in the bowels of Cloud City. Unable to harm it with blasters, they were nearly defeated, when one PC spotted a metal rod on the ground. It looked like some sort of weapon, so he grabbed it and pressed the button, igniting the saber, which cut cleanly through forcefield and droid.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

If it means anything, Timothy Zahn's Star Wars novels claim that Luke's hand and saber did indeed fall down the shaft.

Spoiler

Indeed, a villain recovers the hand and uses it to create a clone of Luke!

 

[JediSoth]

I had always assumed that it was his blaster.

JediSoth

 

[shilsen]

It can't be his hand, because in a Star Wars game I ran, the heroes ended up fighting a droid with a force shield in the bowels of Cloud City. Unable to harm it with blasters, they were nearly defeated, when one PC spotted a metal rod on the ground. It looked like some sort of weapon, so he grabbed it and pressed the button, igniting the saber, which cut cleanly through forcefield and droid.

 

[Jack Daniel]

It's got to be something else. In The Last Command, the third book in Tim Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" trilogy, the dark jedi Joruus C'Baoth had a clone of Luke that was made from his lost hand and carried Anakin's lightsaber.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

It's got to be something else. In The Last Command, the third book in Tim Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" trilogy, the dark jedi Joruus C'Baoth had a clone of Luke that was made from his lost hand and carried Anakin's lightsaber.

Yes...but the hand was recovered from the atmosphere and NOT in Cloud City, IIRC. So, more the reason that it WAS the hand falling