So I’m stopping myself from creating a Luke Skywalker muse because I don’t think I could write him well.
But if I had him as muse, I’d probably end up writing him canon divergent for the new trilogy. Like here’s what I would do:
I imagine that Luke never gave up on his nephew even after Ben went to the dark side and became Kylo Ren. (I think in the spin off novels Luke’s own son or nephew or some relation goes dark and Luke doesn’t give up on them). I tend to think that even after Ben ran away to the First Order, Luke and him had had several confrontations with Luke hoping to get his nephew back into the light and to come home.
Luke kept the secret that Darth Vader was Ben’s grandfather because of Leia’s request, although he tried to convince her many times to tell his nephew the truth of his bloodline.
He never cut himself off from the Force and while he didn’t do major fighting, he always tried to ensure that his family and friends were safe and that the Resistance could still keep going
He has run into his former students that became the Knights of Ren and has made a few of them feel conflicted and some of them are considering the idea of becoming Gray Jedis.
The map he created to find him is relatively recently. He wasn’t running away. Rather, he was going to all the ancient Jedi temples in hopes of finding some wisdom and guidance to help him bring his nephew back to the light. The situation between him and Ben is very different than the one between himself and his father.
He would have taken on Rey as his padawan when she came to him, though there would be some hesitation because he doesn’t want her to have a similar ending as his nephew.
After seeing Rey’s power over the Force, he realized that only she could bring his nephew back to the light for she is Ben’s equal, just like he was his father’s equal.
The night that Ben destroyed the temple is a memory that remains forever in his heart and he deeply regrets what had happened. He had the thought to end it all when he saw the darkness in his nephew’s heart (he may be on the light side, but he’s not immune to the darkness), but he couldn’t do it and had planned to walk away and leave his nephew in peace and talk to Ben in the morning.
In an au, he would have found Rey shortly after her parents abandoned her and taken her back to his temple to train her with his other students. He probably would have kept Rey and Ben together in their studies due to them both have such strong Force sensitives.
Luke is a total Mama’s boy, which is evident in aus where Padme survived despite her husband becoming Darth Vader or Anakin never falling to the dark side.
