The Last Jedi is the eighth installment in Star Wars’ Skywalker Saga, but one of the best scenes in the movie does not even feature a Skywalker. Right before the credits roll, a young boy with a broom is shown on Canto Bight playing with a make-shift Luke Skywalker toy. His character represents the Skywalkers' effects on the whole galaxy, and Broom Boy encapsulates the theme of hope in Rian Johnson’s film.
The Last Jedi did more to divide the Star Wars fandom than any other previous movie in the franchise. Some fans did not like how Johnson handled Luke’s character or that the legendary Jedi master was killed off without fighting. Other fans did not like how easily Snoke was killed or that multiple story points were ignored. However, there are certain things in the film that were particularly successful. Although it came with its own controversy, the ending scene with Broom Boy does more for Johnson’s film than anything else. While the scene is slightly out of touch with the rest of the story, it serves as the perfect reversal in a film that was filled with hopelessness.
Back when The Last Jedi came out, there were a lot of theories circulating about who Broom Boy really was: some theorized that he was Luke’s hidden son, Rey’s future apprentice or that he was going to lead a child uprising against the First Order. That last one may have been a stretch, but the point remains. Sometimes, the Star Wars fandom gets too caught up in who is who and trying to reach big conclusions from little details. That’s why so many people started to panic at the idea that Rey might be a nobody; she had to be somebody important because she was the protagonist. Of course, she did end up being revealed as a very important somebody in The Rise of Skywalker. Even after learning that, most fans never looked back at the fact that Broom Boy was actually a nobody and what that meant for his character in the larger scope of the film.
As explained in The Last Jedi's visual dictionary, Broom Boy's name was Temiri Blagg and he was sold into servitude by his parents to pay a gambling debt. With no way out of his circumstances on Canto Bight, Temiri cared for fathiers under a cruel master. All the while, he dreamt “of a better life somewhere among the stars,” according to StarWars.com. So, he really was a nobody, as Rey was implied to be, but that doesn’t mean that he was not important to the story.
The scene in question shows him and two friends playing with a make-shift Luke Skywalker figurine and telling stories of his heroics before being interrupted by their master. After that, Temiri goes outside and grabs a broom using the Force, gaining the nickname Broom Boy, and looks dramatically off into the stars. However, the most important thing in understanding Temiri’s significance is the timing and context surrounding his appearance.
Right before Broom Boy’s scene was the sequence on Crait where Luke Skywalker saved the remnant of Resistance fighters as a Force-projection. So, when Johnson chose to take his audience back to Canto Bight for the film’s final scene, he had an explicit purpose. In a 2017 interview by Entertainment Weekly, Johnson said, “To me, it shows that the act Luke Skywalker did, of deciding to take on this mantle of ‘the legend,’ after he had decided the galaxy was better off without him, had farther reaching consequences than saving 20 people in a cave.”
While Johnson may have made a controversial Star Wars movie, he does know how to tell a thematic story where everything connects. Most of his movie was about the utter loss of hope and the futility of fighting against the First Order. However, everything changed after Luke’s heroic actions on Crait. So, when he shows Broom Boy playing with a Luke Skywalker figurine, it summarily shows that “the Legend of Luke Skywalker is spreading. Hope is reignited in the galaxy,” as Johnson said in the same interview.
The need for hope in a galaxy of darkness – that is what The Last Jedi is really about. When Luke walked away, he abandoned everyone to that darkness, but Rey helped him see that even little things make a big difference. So, when he saved his friends, he rekindled hope. The symbol of the Rebel Alliance and the Resistance could once again be a light in a galaxy of darkness. That is why Broom Boy had to be a nobody, because he needed to represent how Luke was the catalyst for hope, even for all of the seemingly small and insignificant people.