How old was luke at the end of ROTJ

Just a simple question.

 

Hmmm, I dunno, but I've always wanted to. How old are they in the other movies, too? It provides a good basis for writing the ages of other characters during the movies and in other time periods.

 

Well, it's strange b/c some people say Luke was 18 in ANH while others say 20

ESB adds three years = 21 or 23

RotJ adds a little less than a year= 22 or 24.

I hope that helps.

 

Personally, I'd go with around 21-22 years old.

That's just my personal opinion, of course.

And, yes, I am a LUKE Is/Was 18! follower.

 

RotJ adds a little less than a year= 22 or 24.

I'm not sure this is reliable. The six-month figure comes out of the novel, where the line is "six of the desert planet's long months." I didn't take that to mean six standard months, otherwise nothing would particularly have been made about how they were "this planet's" or "long"... It would have just said, "They'd been there for six months." It made its way into encyclopedias and so on, but I think it started in the novelization, and that line really doesn't lead me to believe it was actually six months as we would understand six months, so I'm not sure we can trust it.

There is some controversy about the age he starts at, as was said. Some say eighteen, some say twenty. And early sources had Leia as sixteen, and if she's a twin, that would be considerably younger.

I think the sixteen can be discounted -- they both look older than that -- and maybe we should just take the mean on the others and say that Luke and Leia are nineteen? Seems as reasonable as anything else. Eighteen would be the age he would normally leave home at; twenty would definitely play into his frustration with Uncle Owen... I don't know. Anyway... Then three years to Empire, taking them to 22, then an indeterminate amount of time to RotJ -- he could be either 23 (if it's close to standard six months) or 25 (if it's more like the elapsed realtime).

Edit: Then again, we could figure Luke's starting age up from the prequels. GL said that TPM was 32 years before ANH. Ten years up to AotC would bring it to 22 years. Then say it's three years to Ep3, leaving 19 years. If she's preggers at the end of Ep3, then L/L would be 18; if they're born, they'd be 19.

 

According to the rather outdated "Guide to the Star Wars Universe" Luke/Leia were eighteen as of ANH. The events of ESB took place three years later and ROJ one year after ESB.

Take that as you will I guess.

 

I've always worked him out to be 22.

 

same. i heard somewhere that Leia became a senator at 16, then 2 yrs later ANH happened.

18 would make sense though. Luke would feel frustrated because when you're 18, you're so close to adulthood you feel like you are one (well, that's what i've observed from my sister)

so how old is han then> isn't he 5 years older? so in ANH, he would be 23. hmmmmmm

here's how i figures it

Luke Leia Han
ANH 18 18 23
ESB 21 21 26
ROTJ 22 22 27

the ESB age makes sense to me too, Luke is really cocky in that one (it's where i like him best ) and that's how a lot of 21 yr olds act (from what i've seen of my sisters college friends.)
Han seems ageless, though, and is always cocky, so his age is harder to place. hmmmmmmmm..........

So how old are they all in RS????????

 

Well, I think that L/L are 18 in ANH. This might change after Ep.III, since we'll definitely see the twins born in Ep.III. AOTC is 22 years before ANH, so as soon as we know definitely how many years are between AOTC and Ep.III, we'll know how old the twins are in ANH.

The possibilities:
(L/L's age in ANH - TESB - ROTJ)
18 - 21 - 22
19 - 22 - 23
20 - 23 - 24

I don't suppose they're younger than 17 in ANH (they would be too young, and besides, they don't look like 17 in there), and if they were 21, they'd be a bit too old. So right now, I think, anything between 18 and 20 years is possible.

And TBF, according to TFN's timeline, Han is born 29 BSW4, which makes him 29 in ANH, 32 in TESB and 33 in ROTJ. I think that's a bit too old, but that's what the official sources say. Lando is two years older than Han.

 

Han is a good bit older than the twins. I think he's almost more of Anakin and Amidala's generation, and Lando certainly is -- he'd be about Anakin's age, I'd think.

And I'm still not buying the shortened time between ESB and RotJ.

 

Lucasfilm employees are even confused about this. For example, the new RPG materials made Mara 2 years older than the twins because someone was using the 18 year figure and someone else was using 20 (and I'm sure they didn't make her age older intentionally, because the date for the Battle of Yavin didn't add up rto be the same from the character entries.)

The basic problem is this: the shooting script for ANH had Luke at 18. This is also where Leia is "about 16", which invalidates that script IMO. (They were not twins at the time - although Luke always had a twin sister, Lucas only later decided that it could be Leia, which tied everything up nicely in 6, thus avoiding the need for a rather thin third trilogy).

The novelization of ANH says Luke is the same age as a two-decade-old vaporator he's repairing. Then the novel of ESB clearly states that it's been three years since Yavin, and Luke is 23. It's possible the author or publisher drew their own mathematical conclusions.... I wish I had a better idea how much they actually consult with Lucasfilm (because now there's a big apparent discrepancy between the novel of TPM and the film of AOTC). Then the novel of JEDI says, as someone else pointed out, it's been "six of the desert planet's months" which I took to mean about six months, as they surely wouldn't leave Han frozen any longer than they had to.

I think the real problem is that Lucas doesn't care what age the twins were in the films.... it's just not an important part of the story. Anakin's age, on the other hand, mattered in TPM because the separation from his mother needed to be traumatic. 18 or 20 makes little difference in the experiences of Luke and Leia.

I go with 24, simply because 30-year-old Hamill could not pass for 21in JEDI. Plus, that scenario makes Guinness' Obi-Wan about 57, which is roughly Qui-Gon's age in TPM, and Obi-Wan looks awfully frail in comparison. Even 59 sounds young for a Jedi to move that slowly, but I'll take every year I can get.

 

Han is a good bit older than the twins. I think he's almost more of Anakin and Amidala's generation, and Lando certainly is -- he'd be about Anakin's age, I'd think.

Actually, I thought that Han was only a few years older than the twins (3-5 years perhaps). And Lando wasn't that old either, Vader was in his fourties during most of the OT and Lando was probably more or less in his thirties.

EDIT- Actually, I had always classified Luke, Leia, Han and Lando all in one generation...

 

I think Han was about 29 in ANH, and if Lando was a couple of years older, he'd be in his early thirties. Vader started out at 42. So Lando is about ten years younger than Vader and twelve years older than the twins, at the generous end of things. Miscalculation of mine to say they're the same age. (I think it came from using real ages or some such. Wasn't Ford 32? Then I assumed Lando was a bit more than two or three years older.)

More to the point, Han, Lando, Anakin, and maybe Padme, have similar behavior patterns associated with a kind of loosely grouped generation. You know what I mean -- no one mistakes the man in the Gray Flannel Suit of the fifties to for the yuppie of the eighties, and neither is comparable to the Gen X restless boss who allows skateboards and frisbees into the office. By the same token, these three all seem to have a certain attitude that strikes me as generational -- in short, their attitude is not "I want to embody universal truths and the current paradigm doesn't correspond" but "The system doesn't work; I'm opting out." Padme tries to work in the system, or to reform it, but ultimately, she also, in crunch time, goes for the pragmatic. (As opposed to Obi-Wan, who always wants to argue philosophy, or Qui-Gon, who lets the system be and tries to help individuals in it.) Luke and Leia, by contrast, seem to have the attitude of "The system doesn't work, let's make a new system."

 

I concur, Galadriel..... my understanding from every source in the EU, and the scripts, is that Han is around 29-30 in ANH, which makes sense for several reasons. But your grouping of him and Lando loosely into Padme's generation makes a ton of sense, and I hadn't thought of it.

I relate to people up to 15 years older than me, and feel like we shared a common experience on earth - same movies, same political events, etc. But people just a few years younger than me feel like a totally different generation with a radically different point of view. There ARE sometimes clear generational deliniations, and the events of the two trilogies set up a prime example of the sort of life & times that cause it.

 

{mumbles} I get it out of Neil Howe and Bill Strauss's 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? and the more serious Generations, by the same two authors. I'd class Anakin, Han, Lando, and possibly Padme as the Reactive type (eg, Gen X, the Lost Generation), Obi-Wan as the Prophet type (the Boom, transcendentalists), Qui-Gon as the Artist (Silent), and the twins as Civic (GIs).

 

i don't buy han being that much older than Leia/Luke. so how old are they all in RS????????? are they all like, 50 - 60?

geez. that's old. i get the bad feeling one of the original three may die soon (disregarding the fact that one of the original four has already died *sob* CHEWIE!! )

i can't remember where i read it, but Han was saying that 5 years wasn't a huge age gap so he and leia could make it at the same time as saying it meant he could still call luke 'kid' my cocky, rough Han

 

One way or another, Han is roughly 10 years older than the twins. That's enough for him to call Luke "kid", and at the same time it's not too much so his relationship with Leia seems plausible (there are many real life couples with even bigger age difference and they work just fine).

But to answer TBF's question: According to TFN timeline, "Rebel Stand" takes place 28 ASW4. So that makes Han 57, Luke and Leia 46 (in case they're 18 in ANH) or 48 (in case they're 20 in ANH). Pretty old, huh?