Plot hole: Luke deliberately says he does not want to be found and came to Ach-To to die in The Last Jedi, but The Force Awakens is all about finding a map to Luke Skywalker. Why would Luke leave a map when he never wanted to be found?
Jon Sandys
17th Dec 2019
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
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Suggested correction: This is a question, not a plot hole. Luke went to find the first Jedi temple. The location of the temple is what they were ultimately needing to try and locate Luke. The map that has the temple was already created before Luke went to the temple, he did not create a map where to find him and then secretly hide it away.
It is a plot hole statement in the form of a question. It ultimately is a continuity error between Episodes 7 and 8. TFA never mentioned it as a map to a Jedi temple Luke might be at. The audience is told in that movie that it is a map to Luke Skywalker. It is believed by the end of TFA that Luke wants to be found if they needed him. It is only after Rian Johnson goes against what JJ Abrams planned for Luke that this error becomes prominent. If this is simply a map to the first Jedi Temple, then the Resistance is betting a lot on the chance Luke went there and still there after all these years.
In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren refers to the map as a navigational chart recovered from the archives of the Empire. According to the spin-off books, the Empire were using it to find the first Jedi Temple and destroy it. So the map was not in fact left by Luke. Since Luke is believed to have gone looking for the first Jedi Temple, my guess is that whoever discovered the map realised where it led to, and knew that was where Luke was believed to have gone, and thus referred to it as a map to Luke.
What other choice do they have? The know where he wanted to go. If the do not find him there then the have someplace to look abound for clues as to where he went to afterwards. Also it is not like if he is not there they are stuck and cannot return to the resistance fleet.
A map to the first Jedi Temple is a perfectly fine explanation for what the map actually is and if the Resistance thought Luke was there, it was worth the risk to go there and look for him. However, the very identity of the map seems to change between movies and it is introduce in TFA as a map to Luke, not to a Jedi Temple. So in TFA it is a map to Luke and in TLJ it is now a map to a Jedi Temple Luke might be at. That is the problem, a discontinuity of the map's identity between the two films in the trilogy. This stems from the two directors' view of Luke in this trilogy also being completely different.
They think it's a map to Luke, or believe it, or someone else thought it was. It's not a discontinuity, just a semantic difference or miscommunication.
This movie or TFA should have explained this miscommunication as it comes across as a miscommunication to the audience and not to the Resistance. There is nothing in either film to show it is a map to a Jedi Temple Luke might be at. A miscommunication to the audience is poor writing, but since this occurs between two movies, it is a continuity mistake. This mistake is obviously due to the character of Luke changing when it moved on from JJ to Rian. This change makes the plot of TFA more confusing, but ultimately a continuity mistake is a much more just denotation for this than plot hole.
Since the Jedi Temple and Luke are in the same place the map is both a map to Luke and to the Jedi Temple. Someone looking for Luke will see it as a map to Luke, someone that is force sensitive may see it a a map to the temple.
This statement does not answer anything. The map was either designed to be a map to where Luke said he was or as map to a Jedi Temple where Luke may be. Not both. Both places can be the same, but the identity of what the map is remains as one or the other. Otherwise we are again back to a bad miscommunication in the Resistance and bad miscommunication to the audience that is just bad writing. Since it is stated in TFA that is is a map to Luke, the audience should believe it as such. It is never described as a map to a Jedi Temple Luke might be at. The continuity error and plot confusion comes from the fact that in TFA it is a map to Luke for when he was needed and in TLJ it is a map to a Jedi Temple that the Resistance hoped Luke would be at. Since TFA came first, it takes precedent and all of Luke's lines of not wanting to be found do not make sense.
While initially the audience is told it's a map to Luke, we find out later that the map leads to the first Jedi temple. This is nothing more than building suspense, which doesn't constitute a plot hole. While one could argue it was only after changes to the script or a director's choice that changed what the map was designed to be, the original mistake is still not valid because Luke never created a map to where he was going and then hide it as suggested.
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