Mark Hamill Didn’t Voice Luke Skywalker In The Mandalorian Season 2 Finale

As it turns out, Hamill didn’t provide the voice for Luke Skywalker’s return in The Mandalorian season 2 finale. Jon Favreau explains how it was done.

Mark Hamill didn’t voice Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian season 2 finale. Created by Jon Favreau, the first live-action Star Wars show also happened to be Disney+’s inaugural series. After a successful first season, its sophomore year debuted just a year later, continuing the adventures of Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and the mysterious Grogu — a Force-sensitive being from the same species as Jedi Grandmaster Yoda.

Mando’s mission for The Mandaorian season 2 was clear — reunite the Child with its people, but in the meantime, he becomes his father figure. Wrapping up a year full of cameos from the bigger Star Wars universe with live-action debuts from B0-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) and Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), it saved its biggest one for last — Luke Skywalker. The beloved Jedi appeared as a last-minute special guest in the finale. Luke’s involvement was rather brief since he was really only there to pick up Grogu for his training. But despite this, there was so much work that went into pulling off the show’s biggest surprise thus far.

Related: Luke Skywalker’s Future Explained: Will He Return In The Mandalorian Season 3?

Much has been said about how the actor was de-aged in his one scene in The Mandalorian, but The Mandalorian “Making of S2 Finale” documentary on Disney+ reveals new information about the whole process. Surprisingly, Hamill didn’t provide the voice for Luke’s return in the show. According to Favreau (via Collider), it was completely synthesized. Meanwhile, sound editor Matthew Wood expounded on the matter, saying that they used archival material of Hamill during this era from old Star Wars sources. Read what they said below:

Favreau: “Something people didn’t realize is that his voice isn’t real. His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application called Respeecher.”

Wood: “It’s a neural network you feed information into and it learns. So I had archival material from Mark in that era. We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he’d done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time. I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data.”

Frankly, Favreau and his team didn’t have to go through all this trouble for just a few lines for Luke in The Mandalorian. For what it’s worth, it’s not something that fans would’ve picked apart since much of the attention will be on seeing him physically on the screen. Perhaps it would’ve been better if they spent more time refining the details of his CGI since that’s where the criticisms came in. In addition to that, Hamill is known as a prolific voice actor. He could’ve easily recorded his dialog and mimicked how he sounded before. For what it’s worth, he’s been doing uncredited voice acting roles in other Star Wars projects, why not do it for his own character? Then again, it’s also impressive that they went through these lengths to ensure the highest quality that can be achieved for the monumental cameo.

At this point, it’s uncertain if Luke will make another appearance in The Mandalorian after his season 2 debut. It’s worth noting, however, that based on canon, his efforts to rebuild the Jedi Order go awry, leaving Grogu’s fate bleaker. That said, considering how big of a hit the Child and Din’s tandem was, expect them to be reunited sooner or later.

More: Mandalorian Image Shows Plo Koon’s Head On Luke Skywalker’s Body To Avoid Spoilers

Source: Disney+, Collider

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