"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
That's one of those classically memorable lines from the original Star Wars film, A New Hope. Leia lounges in her extrajudicial torture cell, expecting some sort of princely rescue — and instead, meets a cute-lookin' schlub in ill-fitting stormtrooper armor who ends up being her biological twin (oops).
But what if there's more to the line than that? What if that line was put there not as some sardonic comic relief … but as a clue? "There's always a bigger fish," said Qui-Gon Jinn in Episode I: The Phantom Menace. But what if there's also always … a bigger Luke Skywalker?!
<insert dramatic pause>
Okay but seriously this is a thing, to some strange corners of the Internet: the idea that there have always been two Lukes, one taller than the other. And that these Two Lukes are in fact separate characters (and not in the weird Star Wars Expanded Universe way where "Luuke Skywalker" is a clone of the original Luke, because for some reason clones over-emphasis vowels when they talk). The Guardian tries to explain the logic here:
According to BL's official wiki page, which emerged mysteriously in late 2015, one of these Lukes is Regular Luke (or "Luke Prime") and the other is a "slightly larger manifestation" known to the community as "Bigger Luke".
Luke Prime is the Luke Skywalker we know and love – he of the faraway gaze and complex father issues – who appears in the majority of scenes. Bigger Luke is a kind of shadowy doppelganger who (allegedly) pops into frame now and then, and whose very existence hints at a deeper, or perhaps larger, reality.
[…]
There are two ideological camps, both convinced the other is a few parsecs short of a Kessel Run. The first, known as the Canon Luke Hypothesis, believes that (within the Star Wars universe) there really does exist a second, larger Luke Skywalker. The other theory is known as The Hamill Hypothesis, and posits that it's not Luke who is bigger, but the actor Mark Hamill himself, and that an uncredited (and very slightly taller) Mark Hamill lookalike was used in the original trilogy "for undisclosed reasons".
And then there's this, directly from the fan-driven Bigger Luke Wiki:
A theory introduced circa 2003 which has yet to gain significant ground claims that it is possible that it is not Luke who changes size between different shots but, in fact, everything else around Luke changes size, including the characters. Much like the theories surrounding Mark Hamill's car accident in early 1977, it is assumed that the scenes with smaller sets and characters were chronologically filmed after the other scenes. The presumed reason for this was due to budget cuts on the set due to the 1970's Oil Crisis, and therefore all set pieces and props were cut slightly smaller to save money. The reason as to why all other characters besides Luke are slightly shorter can be chocked up to slight malnutrition, as due to the crisis food was prioritized for the star of the film.
This theory has never been taken seriously by any significant number of Bigger Luke Theorists, who have always considered it far too outlandish. It is generally believed that the proponent of this theory was joking – or even trying to poison the well.
What if the Bigger Luke is true … from a certain point of view?!
The Bigger Luke Hypothesis: going deep on Star Wars' most absurd fan theory [James Shackell / The Guardian]
