The first time I noticed Luke’s prosthetic hand was still damaged after Return of the Jedi, I couldn’t help but wonder—why didn’t he fix it? At first, it seemed like a small detail, just some battle damage from Jabba’s sail barge. But as the movie went on, he never bothered to repair it.
Then The Last Jedi came along, and there it was again—the exposed mechanical hand, unchanged after all these years. Luke had the means to restore it, so why did he choose to leave it that way? Was it just a stylistic choice, or was there something deeper behind it?
What Happened to Luke’s Prosthetic Hand?
During Return of the Jedi, we see Luke’s prosthetic hand get damaged during the mission to rescue Han Solo from Jabba the Hutt. While fighting on Jabba’s sail barge, Luke deflects blaster fire with his lightsaber, but one stray shot manages to hit his right hand. The blast doesn’t destroy the hand, but it burns away the synthetic skin, exposing the metallic components underneath.
Despite this damage, Luke barely reacts. Instead of stopping to assess the injury, he continues fighting and leads the escape. From this point on, he never repairs the synthetic flesh, choosing instead to wear a black glove over his hand for the rest of the movie.
After the war, we later see Luke in The Last Jedi, and by that time, he never restored the synthetic skin at all.
Luke Chose Not to Repair His Hand
We all saw Luke’s prosthetic hand get damaged in Return of the Jedi, but even after the Empire was defeated, he never restored the synthetic flesh. By the time we see him again in The Last Jedi, he’s fully embraced the exposed mechanical hand. But why?
Surprisingly, we get some insight into this mindset from the book From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back. The novel expands on Luke’s experience with getting his prosthetic hand in the first place, showing that he struggled with more than just physical injury.
Luke’s First Doubts About His Hand:
During the procedure, 2-1B, the medical droid, notices something unusual—Luke doesn’t react to pain the way most patients do. He barely acknowledges it, as if his mind is elsewhere. When offered painkillers, he refuses, saying they wouldn’t work on him. But it isn’t the physical pain that’s bothering him—it’s something deeper.
At one point, Luke even hesitates before accepting the cybernetic hand, questioning whether he should have it replaced at all. He tells 2-1B:
“Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe I was destined to lose my hand in exchange for something else.”
He sees it as a punishment for his failures—rushing off to fight Vader before completing his training, failing to save Han, and nearly falling into the dark side. He even brings up how, in some cultures, amputation is a punishment for crimes, almost as if he believes he doesn’t deserve to be whole again.
“I’ve made mistakes… I don’t deserve to have it fixed.”
The book also hints at another reason Luke might have felt uneasy about his new hand. When 2-1B explains that cybernetic limbs are common—even among the Sith—Luke’s mind immediately goes to Darth Vader.
“Sith like Darth Vader…” Luke said, his eyes widening.
He has now lost a part of himself just as his father did, and that mechanical hand is a constant reminder of it. Even though Luke rejects the dark side, he carries the scars of that battle forever.
Knowing this, it’s not surprising that Luke never repaired the synthetic skin after Return of the Jedi.
In The Last Jedi, we see a broken, self-exiled Luke, weighed down by his past failures. He’s no longer the hopeful Jedi Knight we once knew—he’s someone who believes his time as a Jedi caused more harm than good. His decision to isolate himself on Ahch-To and cut himself off from the Force reflects his complete rejection of his old identity.
The exposed mechanical hand becomes a powerful symbol of this transformation. Just like how he no longer hides from his regrets, he also doesn’t try to cover up his scars—whether physical or emotional. And if we connect this to what we learned from From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back, where Luke questions whether he even deserves to have his hand replaced, it’s possible that he never intended to fix it at all. His damaged prosthetic may have served as a reminder, not just of his past battles, but of the weight he carried from The Empire Strikes Back onward.