Mark Hamill Was Not Used At All For Luke Skywalker’s Recent ‘Boba Fett’ Appearance

If you’ve been keeping up with the “Star Wars” series on Disney+, “The Mandalorian” and now, “The Book of Boba Fett,” it’s obvious that Lucasfilm is unafraid to bring back Luke Skywalker for an episode or two. So far, both series have utilized Skywalker at least once each, and it would appear that there’s really no end in sight for the studio throwing in the Jedi hero in future episodes. The crazy thing is that none of this requires actor Mark Hamill.

After the most recent appearance of Luke Skywalker in ‘Boba Fett,’ the folks at Esquire took a deep dive into how the de-aged Jedi is being brought to life in the live-action series and how it looks so much better now than it did just a year or so ago in “The Mandalorian.” Well, funny enough, the current, much-improved young Luke is done without the use of Mark Hamill, which is super fascinating and also a bit creepy when you think about how Lucasfilm can possibly do this effect with so many other characters. 

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Previously, when Luke showed up in “The Mandalorian,” the effect was achieved exactly how you might expect. A young body double/lookalike was brought in to do the scene with dots on his face. Then, Hamill was brought in to do the same scene. Mix the young with the old, and voila, you have de-aged Luke. Albeit, there was a bit of a creepy aspect to that appearance because apparently, they never had Mark Hamill record audio for the appearance. Using an AI program, Respeecher, Lucasfilm folks took previously recorded audio of Hamill from the films, from audio books, and from recorded plays to create the dialogue for “The Mandalorian.” But this pales in comparison to the creep factor of what happened in ‘Boba Fett.’

According to Esquire, “The Book of Boba Fett” went the full step of eliminating Hamill altogether. Not only was his voice digitally created, but his likeness was as well. After the de-aging effect in “The Mandalorian” was panned by most critics and fans, Lucasfilm went ahead and hired the deep fake artist, Shamook, who famously “fixed” the CGI in “The Mandalorian” on his own, which led to a viral video and a new job at Lucasfilm. This also meant that Mark Hamill was no longer necessary. So, you have performance artist, Scott Lang, hired to “play” Luke while on the set, the deep fake tech used to put Hamill’s face on the character, then Respeecher to make him say whatever you want.

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The result of all of this trickery is a bunch of fan service that made people lose their minds and talk about how great the episode of ‘Boba Fett’ is. This also means that, in the future, Lucasfilm can practically do this with just about anyone. It’s scary, but also intriguing. We’ll have to see how it is utilized in the future.