Mark Hamill's Star Wars Replacement Character Is Nothing Like Luke Skywalker

Published Sep 13, 2026, 11:54 AM EDT

Liam Gaughan is a film and TV writer at Collider. He has been writing film reviews and news coverage for ten years. Between relentlessly adding new titles to his watchlist and attending as many screenings as he can, Liam is always watching new movies and television shows.

In addition to reviewing, writing, and commentating on both new and old releases, Liam has interviewed talent such as Mark Wahlberg, Jesse Plemons, Sam Mendes, Billy Eichner, Dylan O’Brien, Luke Wilson, and B.J. Novak. Liam aims to get his spec scripts produced and currently writes short films and stage plays. He lives in Allentown, PA.

It would be challenging to make any list of the greatest heroes of all time without mentioning Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. While audiences may have been used to seeing superpowered characters with confidence and abilities, Luke was unique because he was simply a young man trying to find his place in the galaxy far, far away. Hamill has been an integral part of the Star Wars franchise since its inception and has returned to play a more grizzled version of Luke in the most recent sequel trilogy. However, **Hamill played a different Force-powered character when he had a guest role in the sixth season of **Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Hamill voices Sith Lord Darth Bane in the episode “Sacrifice,” in which Yoda (Tom Kane) travels to the dark side world of Morriban after intercepting a vergence in the Force. Although he is eventually met with a startling vision about Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) and Darth Sidious (Ian McDiarmid) starting an intergalactic conflict, Bane shows that the Sith have secretly been plotting to take down the Jedi Order for years. Hamill brought a creepy sense of legacy to the character, differentiating him from the other Sith Lords already featured in the franchise. Although he and Yoda never engage in an actual lightsaber duel, Bane certainly set precedents for the Sith dynasty that have had ramifications that lasted long beyond his death.

The scores below reveal how the Force sees you. Your highest number is your true alignment. Read on to understand what that means — and what it will cost you.

Disciplined, compassionate, and deeply attuned to the living Force, you have walked the path long enough to understand its demands — and accept them. You lead not through authority alone, but through example. You have felt the pull of the dark side and chosen otherwise, every time. That is not certainty. That is courage.

You are earnest, powerful, and brimming with potential — and you know it, which is both your greatest asset and your most dangerous flaw. You act before you think, trust your gut over your training, and sometimes confuse impatience for bravery. The Masters see something in you, though. The question isn’t whether you have what it takes — it’s whether you’ll be patient enough to find out.

You are not simply dangerous — you are certain, and that is worse. You have decided what the galaxy needs, and you have decided you are the one to deliver it. Your power is genuine and formidable, earned through sacrifice that would have broken lesser beings. But examine your victories carefully. Every Sith believed their cause was righteous. The dark side’s cruelest trick is that it agrees with you.

You were forged in fire and reshaped by those who found you at your lowest. You serve, because service gave you structure when you had none. Your allegiance is not to an ideology — it is to survival and to the master who gave you purpose. But there is something buried beneath the conditioning. The Jedi you hunt? You recognize them. Because you remember what it felt like before the choice was taken from you.

You have looked at the Jedi Code and the Sith Code and found both of them incomplete. You walk the line not out of indecision but out of conviction — you genuinely believe both extremes miss something essential. The Jedi don’t fully trust you. The Sith think you’re wasting your potential. They’re both partially right. But so are you.

Bane is a crucial character in the Star Wars universe, initially established by **George Lucas **in the official novelization of ***Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace ***as the Sith Lord who created the Rule of Two, which said that only one Sith master and one apprentice could exist at a time in order to keep the organization secret. While earlier regimes of Sith had become too obsessed with power and ended up annihilating each other, Bane recognized that there was an opportunity to deceive the Jedi Order into thinking that the dark side had become extinct. Bane was certainly an imposing figure whenever he engaged in combat, but it was his strategic mind that ended up shaping the direction of the Sith moving forward and, in many ways, inspired Palpatine.

**Bane’s appearance in Star Wars: The Clone Wars brought him into the official canon, as many of the books, comics, video games, and other expanded universe content released prior to 2014 were classified as part of the “Legends” timeline. Formerly known as the Expanded Universe, the Legends timeline became decanonized to make way for Disney’s new timeline, though several things from the Expanded Universe have since been brought over. Although the three *Darth Bane *novels by **Drew Karpyshyn **were often cited as among the best *Star Wars *spin-offs, many fans doubted that the character would ever be brought into the new canon. Bane’s appearance was a significant moment that showed that Lucasfilm had paid attention to the love that the character received; the fact that it was Hamill voicing the character and bringing such a sinister edge to the role made it even cooler.

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