What's Eating Owen Lars?

- by ReuBen DeBord, 4 May 2017

Hey there, Trash Muties! You may be wondering why I’m not talking about back issues of Invincible today. Well, I do talk about other things sometimes…and today is sorta special for us Star Wars fans. It’s May the Fourth! So even though the official Star Wars day was a couple of weeks ago, that’s stupid. Star Wars day should be May the Fourth, for that whole “May the Fourth be with you” pun.
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So today, in honor of what should actually be Star Wars day. I want to talk about a character who I don’t think generates nearly enough discussion among Star Wars fans. Uncle Owen Lars, Luke’s father figure who shows up in Star Wars Episode IV just long enough to keep Luke from achieving his dreams and then get charbroiled to a crisp off screen. And then he shows up even more briefly in Episode II 25 years later.

So why do we need to talk about Owen Lars? Because he’s interesting, that’s why! Maybe one of the most complicated guys in Star Wars. Or at least, in the movies. “What’s so special about him? Like you said, he’s just there to hold Luke back from his heroic quest.” Yeah, but there’s so much more bubbling under the surface.

There’s really two ways you can look at Lars. First, pretend like you don’t know that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker, or pretend like you do know. Even though George Lucas would have you believe that when the first Star Wars movie came out 40 years ago, he had this grand master plan of 12 movies and all of the backstory was planned out and would only be given to audiences slowly over the decades, in reality, he and all the folks who don’t get enough credit for what they brought to Star Wars were just making it all up as they went along.

If you watch Episode IV (hey, speaking of just making it up as they went along, originally, it wasn’t Episode IV, it wasn’t A New Hope, it was just Star Wars. The numerals and the extra title were only added after they knew they would get a sequel. Many people, myself included, sometimes forget that Lucas going back and altering the movies is not a new thing he only started recently) and forget everything that you learned in the sequels and prequels, Darth Vader is just some bad dude who was buddies with Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and turned bad. Owen Lars was probably Anakin’s brother (or maybe Anakin was Beru’s brother. It’s never made very clear which side of the family Darth Vader actually comes from in the original trilogy). And about 2/3s of Owen’s dialogue in the movie is him trying to convince Luke that being a farmer is fun, and that his awesome dad wasn’t that great at all.

So why? Remember, at this point, Anakin Skywalker is not Darth Vader. When we do find out that Anakin was the one who turned evil, Owen trying to keep Luke on a farm in the middle of nowhere suddenly makes a lot more sense. He knows that Anakin turned evil when he was hanging out with that crazy old wizard who lives out in the dune sea, so if Luke goes with that guy, then Owen hasn’t only lost his brother, but the closest thing to a son he ever had, too. (And in fact, when you do go back and watch A New Hope with this knowledge, Beru’s glib “He has too much of his father in him” line sounds really weird. His father is a genocidal hit man for the empire that has been repressing the entire galaxy for the last 20 years, and you’re casually implying that Owen shouldn’t hold Luke back from being more like his dad?

​That makes me think that Owen never told Beru what happened to Anakin. We never actually see or hear the conversation between Obi-Wan and the Lars’ when he drops off baby Luke, so maybe Obi-Wan told Owen what happened to Anakin, and Owen decided not to tell Beru. Probably a wise move. Don’t want the wife stressing out about the Storm Troopers coming and looking for the Sith Lord’s only son. So this at least takes care of Beru being strangely okay with Luke having too much of Darth Vader in him.

Young farmers.

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​But anyway, back to Owen. When we watch Episode IV with the knowledge we have from the other movies, his behavior is very understandable, and you just want to reach through the screen and slap Luke around a little bit for whining about his uncle trying to save his life. But when you watch Episode IV without the information you get from the later movies, Owen is presented as the bad guy in the dynamic. Of course we’re on Luke’s side. If anything, I’d much rather watch a movie with space stations blowing up, princesses being rescued and evil aliens getting dismembered than 2 hours of Luke harvesting moisture with the droids.

So what is Owen’s deal in this context? The official party line is that Luke is way too essential to lose, and that Owen and Beru won’t be able to handle the farm by themselves if he leaves. Now maybe that’s true, maybe not. We don’t know how wealthy the Lars clan is in comparison to everyone else on Tatooine. He’s probably not the richest guy on the planet, since he’s basically next door neighbor’s with Jabba the Hut, who has a floating palace and a criminal empire that touches all corners of the galaxy. But I don’t think the Lars’ are especially poor, either. They’re wealthy enough to buy a couple of droids, they’ve got a speeder which probably wasn’t very cheap, and they’ve got a pretty huge stretch of land (if everything we see when Luke is staring off in the distance acting sad actually belongs to the Lars’, then their moisture farm is probably bigger than any farm that exists on Planet Earth today).

So the idea that Luke is irreplaceable doesn’t float with me. They can afford some more help. Either droids (which is probably not a good move, since C3PO and R2D2 didn’t seem very capable of farm-labor) or actual sentient beings who can help with the chores. Maybe Owen is thinking it’s fiscally responsible to keep Luke here because he doesn’t have to actually pay him what he would pay hired help. Give him a speeder and that’ll keep him happy.

Whiny Luke.

​It’s starting to look like Owen Lars is the Space adventure serial equivalent of Uncle Vernon from the Harry Potter novels. Remember how Uncle Vernon doesn’t like Harry AT ALL, and clearly would rather he not be in the house. But then when he’s presented with an opportunity to have Harry out of the house for roughly 9 months a year for the next 7 years, he fights that tooth and nail, just to spite Harry. Owen has seemingly made an agreement with Luke that will allow Luke to go to space academy, and reneges on that agreement near the beginning of the movie, all in the name of keeping the farm going with Luke’s invaluable assistance. But how helpful is Luke when he spends all of his time whining about how “it just isn’t fair” and lamenting about how he wanted to go pick up some power converters? I can’t believe that Luke was that much of an asset, just based on what we saw of him in A New Hope.

So that brings us back to the question. When we ignore every movie except for A New Hope, what is Owen’s deal? Is he just a grumpy old man who doesn’t want anyone else to find happiness? That sure is what it looks like. Now let me propose an alternate solution. I once joked that Beru and Obi-Wan Kenobi had a secret affair at some point when Luke was younger, and maybe Owen found out about it. Maybe Owen didn’t get a divorce or whatever the space equivalent of divorce is because running a farm is hard work and even if your wife is sleeping with that crazy old wizard who lives on the dune sea, you don’t want to kick her to the curb, because then the only other person to help you run the farm is your whiny nephew.

​So joke or not, this would certainly provide a reason why Owen seems to hate Obi Wan, or at least doesn’t like him very much. So let’s build off of that. Maybe Beru didn’t even have a thing going with Obi-Wan. Maybe she had a thing with someone else on Tatooine. That scruffy looking nerf herder who is just in for the weekend at Moss Eisly. Maybe she swung by his place when she was supposed to be buying more Blue Milk at Space-mart. Or maybe she’s having an affair with Biggs Darklighter’s father. Or maybe Biggs Darklighter himself, if she’s into younger men. We know even less about Beru than we do Owen, so it’s anyone’s guess what she was up to before she got fried. But all jests aside, maybe Owen and Beru’s marriage wasn’t exactly a happy and healthy one. What if Owen was afraid that Luke was the only thing keeping his marriage and his livelihood going? If Luke goes off to the academy, he’s almost certainly never going to come back home, even if Owen and Beru don’t get killed by Stormtroopers. And if Beru isn’t happy in her marriage with Owen, and she leaves as soon as Luke does, then he certainly can’t keep the farm going on his own.

Or if you want to be less cynical than that, maybe Owen knows that Beru is unhappy, but he still loves her with his old crusty heart, and he doesn’t want to see her leave, even if she doesn’t feel the same way about him. Episode II (yes, I’m breaking my rule of going to movies outside of Episode IV, sue me) tells us that Beru and Owen were extremely young when they met, and I can see them being the kinds of kids who ran off and got married when they were 17. Maybe Beru realized that marrying Owen was a mistake she made when she was a dumb kid, and if that crazy old wizard who lives out on the Dune Sea didn’t hoist this baby on them, then she might’ve left a long time ago. And if we’re stil steering clear of the cynical side of things, maybe a part of Owen doesn’t want Luke to go because he thinks of him like a son.

​When you get right down to it, Luke is kinda an anus to his aunt and uncle. Yeah, life on the farm was probably boring, but you’re basically as bad as Simba saying he can’t wait until his parents die. You’re constantly going on about how much you hate this life that your aunt and uncle chose, it’s a little understandable that Owen fears that Luke will never come back once he leaves the nest. Sure, Owen may not show lots of affection in his brief appearances (he’s a typical manly man of the house, it’s to be expected that he keeps it bottled up), but he couldn’t have been thrilled about seeing his surrogate son want to leave home and never come back for years and years.

Such a happy couple.

So when we get down to it, I guess Owen isn’t as complex as I first asserted. Whether you watch Episode IV in a vacuum or you watch it as part of an ever-growing saga, Owen’s key motivation is basically love for his family. The details might change, as he’s either acting to preserve his nephew’s life and keep him from the dark side, or he’s just trying to hold on to his family which is the only other thing he has besides his work. Who would have thought someone like me could have rambled on for so long about such a minor character in the Star Wars universe?

So what do you guys think? Am I extrapolating from something that isn’t there? Should I just shut up about this guy and be glad he died so that Luke could go swing a laser sword? Or is there even more options to explore regarding the motivations of who I would suggest is still one of the more interesting characters in Star Wars? Sound off in the comments below! In the meantime, keep it trashy, muties!

Tagged: movies & TV.

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