History Tearjerker / TheLastJedi

** Not only that, but Luke referring to Anakin as ''Vader''. Luke might have redeemed himbut he can't forget what he became nor what he's done. Even in death, Anakin still suffers.

** When combined with her Force-vision underneath the island, this revelation becomes absolutely ''devastating'' for Rey. For the last two movies, Rey has been desperately searching for meaning in her life, looking for a place to belong. She looks to legends like Han, Leia, and Luke, asking them to tell her where she belongs. Rey might well have been expecting some grand revelation to come from the Mirror vision. For her, finding out she was a chosen one or special based on her heritage would be a ''good'' thing, because then at least she could believe she was fitting into some grand plan. But she's not. Luke has no answers for Rey. Her Force-vision shows nothing but herself. She ''isn't'' TheChosenOne like Anakin or the child of TheChosenOne like Luke or Kylo. She's ''not'' part of some HeroicLineage. [[TheUnchosenOne She's just a girl from nowhere]].

** Holdo, for all her abrasive responses to Poe, actually doesn't hate him. When Leia tases Poe and brings him aboard an escape pod, Holdo strokes his hair and she and Leia have a laugh about how Poe is so reckless. Poe never knew that Holdo actually cared.
* Admiral Holdo's HeroicSacrifice and her emotional farewell with Leia. At first, Holdo is being set up as a foil to Leia and by proxy, Dameron. Seemingly passive to Leia's active response, Dameron denounces her as a coward. Then not only did Holdo prove him wrong by not only having a plan to ensure the survival of the remaining Resistance members, but she also stayed behind to pilot the main ship to provide a distraction for the First Order. Then she managed to wreck Snoke's private ship by ramming into it while accelerating to ''lightspeed'' in one of the most badass [[TakingYouWithMe suicide takedowns]] in film history, thus saving them all.

* R2-D2 plays Leia's old message from ''Film/ANewHope''. Luke looks so sad and ashamed of himself when he hears, "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." once more. This is what finally motivates him to train Rey, likely to honor his old mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi one last time. Right before that, when R2 activates, Luke turns around, wide-eyed, and disbelievingly says "R2???" He sounds just like the 19-year-old farmboy from the original trilogy again, if just for a second. Then he laughs, so happy to see who was probably his closest companion among the original trilogy cast, but there's so much pain in it. He knows that things can never be the same as they were because of everything he's been through and lost.

** When Kylo confronts Luke, he mockingly asks him if he’s going to “say you forgive me” or try to “save my soul”. Standard villain stuff... only the way Kylo ''spits'' the lines, every word laced with pure hatred and bitterness, as well as his generally unstable demeanor, is a real gut-punch. This is the first time uncle and nephew have seen each other since that fateful night when Luke’s temple burned. Kylo’s clearly still deeply hurt by Luke’s betrayal of him and Luke…pretty much acknowledges it. He never raises his voice to Kylo or tries to rebut him. He simply honestly states he’s not here to save him because he knows he can’t but that he’s sorry anyway. This, coupled with Luke’s earlier assertion to Leia that “no one is ever truly gone” carries the implication that Luke still loves his nephew and believes he could still potentially be redeemed, but he knows that ''he'' can not and will not be the one to do it.

* R2-D2 plays Leia's old message from ''Film/ANewHope''. Luke looks so sad and ashamed of himself when he hears, "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." once more. This is what finally motivates him to train Rey, likely to honor his old mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi one last time. It's also a TearJerker in the meta sense, of course, thanks to Carrie Fisher's passing (and, for that matter, Leia's final moments in ''Film/RogueOne'').
** Right before that, when R2 activates, Luke turns around, wide-eyed, and disbelievingly says "R2???" He sounds just like the 19-year-old farmboy from the original trilogy again, if just for a second. Then he laughs, so happy to see who was probably his closest companion among the original trilogy cast, but there's so much pain in it. He knows that things can never be the same as they were because of everything he's been through and lost.

** Not only that, but Luke referring to Anakin as ''Vader''. Luke might have redeemed him [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome but he can't forget what he became nor what he's done]]. Even in death, Anakin still suffers.

* The twin suns vision, as Binary Sunset plays.

%% Top image retained and lower image removed per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1523627652038448600
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* Kylo's order to aim every gun available and fire on Luke, followed by his pure, unbalanced rage displayed when he confronted him on the ground. Nothing else the viewer has seen up to this point has made him that angry for so long. It's clear that Kylo once truly respected, trusted, and looked up to Luke, and the rage displayed comes from terrible pain over Luke's betrayal. In this light, that betrayal, however momentary, seems to be very likely what turned him to the dark side more than Snoke's manipulations. When Hux commands their forces to stop, while it's due to the fact that they're concentrating an excessive amount of artillery on a single human, he also sounds like [[EvenEvilHasStandards he's doing so because their shelling has turned into straight-up cruelty]].

** The scene when Leia and Luke meet begins with Leia joking that she [[CallBack "changed [her] hair."]] It seems hilarious when you see the movie, but when you crack open the visual dictionary, you find out WHY Leia changed her hairstyle between movies... [[FunnyAneurysmMoment She's in mourning for Han.]]

** Alternatively, he may mean that the time of the Jedi teachings are over...[[PassingTheTorch so it can pass to a new line of successors]]. Regardless of context, though, it's still quite sad to see the Jedi we all knew and love seemingly doomed to disappear.

* In the second trailer, there's a brief sequence where Kylo flies towards Leia's command ship, fully intending to kill his own mother to further his journey towards the Dark Side. The sad part comes in when you see the look on his face, which betrays the fact that he clearly doesn't want to do this, but feels he must in order to become as strong as his grandfather.

** Like ''Film/RogueOne'', it lends a quite visceral edge to the kind of devastating fights that a RedShirtArmy often goes through, and which the viewer often finds easy to overlook with the focus on the saga's main characters.

* Rey believes that Kylo Ren can be redeemed, just as how Luke managed to turn his father Darth Vader to the Light Side. And in the end, Rey does indeed convince Ren to kill Snoke, just as Vader killed Palpatine. But the parallel story Rey sees doesn't really exist, and her heart breaks as she learns the truth: Kylo Ren killed Snoke not to defeat the First Order, but [[TheStarscream to usurp it]].

* Rey admitting that her parents were ''never'' going to come back for her. All those years she spent in Jakku waiting for them was just her lying to herself, burying the fact that they were a pair of junk-rats who sold their own daughter for booze money, and eventually got themselves killed, buried in unmarked graves she will never find under the sands of Jakku.

* For a brief few minutes we don't just see a path to redemption for Kylo Ren, we get a glimpse of the hero he could have been. Rey might well believe that her vision could come true. And then she discovers just how deeply he's tied to his ideology and he's willing to let the resistance die along with the rest of the things from the past.

** Right before that, when R2 activates, and Luke turns around, wide-eyed, and disbelievingly says "R2???" He sounds just like the 19-year-old farmboy from the original trilogy again, if just for a second. Then he laughs, so happy to see who was probably his closest companion among the original trilogy cast, but there's so much pain in it. He knows that things can never be the same as they were because of everything he's been through and lost.

** When Kylo confronts Luke, he mockingly asks him if he’s going to “say you forgive me” or try to “save my soul”. Standard villain stuff... only the way Kylo ''spits'' the lines, every word laced with pure hatred and bitterness, as well as his generally unstable demeanor, is a real gut-punch. This is the first time uncle and nephew have seen each other since that fateful night when Luke’s temple burned. Kylo’s clearly still deeply hurt by Luke’s betrayal of him and Luke…pretty much acknowledges it. He never raises his voice to Kylo or tries to rebut him. He simply honestly states he’s not here to save him, because he knows he can’t, but that he’s sorry anyway. This, coupled with Luke’s earlier assertion to Leia that “no one is ever truly gone” carries the implication that Luke still loves his nephew and believes he could still potentially be redeemed, but he knows that ''he'' can not, and will not be the one to do it.

* The surprisingly happy reunion between Luke and Chewie is dampened when he learns that the latter came with Rey on the Falcon... And then it sinks in.

* Poe's big victory over the dreadnought at the start of the film was all well and good, until we are shown a clearly upset Leia gazing at a panel that displayed how [[PyrrhicVictory few of the Resistance's fleet remained]]. Later, she delivers a slap to Poe's face and a demotion for his recklessness. Sure, Poe may have inflicted a setback for the First Order, but given that Leia has experienced the deaths of way, ''way'' too many people at this point (the destruction of her home planet, the destruction of an entire star system, and most of all the death of her husband), can you ''really'' blame her for being upset over Poe being the indirect cause of even more of her allies' deaths? It's also a small wonder that her substitute, Vice-Admiral Holdo, has such a snarky and screw-you attitude towards him.

* While Leia is angry at Poe for not being practical, she's still very motherly, perhaps treating him as a ReplacementGoldfish for Kylo Ren. Her expressions throughout the film while talking to and about him range from "I'm too old for this" to "You're such a child". At the end she admits that she may not be able to save her son, who will murder them all, and orders everyone to follow Poe when he decides to evacuate the base.

** Even more so, given how submerged his X-Wing is, Luke couldn't have physically pushed it in or crashed it into the water, so he used the force to put in underwater. When training with Yoda in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', his first piece of real training was lifting his X-Wing out of the water.

* When Finn and Rose are looking for their master hacker on a luxury gambling planet, Finn is visibly dazzled by all the wealth and glamour after his regimented life as a Stormtrooper, but Rose tells him to look closer and reveals to him the dark exploitative underside that makes all that glamour and luxury possible. The fathiers appear to be a local species and the owners of the gambling planet have effectively enslaved them for use in an equivalent to horse racing -- we see these huge, graceful animals being brutalized and their ''child slave stable hands'' being beaten when they try to protect the animals they care for from being cut and burned. It's like an incredibly dark and tragic call-back to the in-universe fun and thrilling pod races of Episode One. When Rose and Finn free the fathiers en masse and they realize they're free and escape into the wilderness this turns into happy tears, however.

** They had come to like this guy and convinced themselves he was a gambler with a heart of gold but instead, after being captured, he not only betrays them but allows the First Order to track the fleeing Rebels. Rose cries and Finn is stunned that the man really was all about himself and "just business," not caring about the lives he's costing.

* Rey believes that Kylo Ren can be redeeemed, just as how Luke managed to turn his father Darth Vader to the light side. And in the end Rey does indeed convince Ren to kill Snoke, just as Vader killed Palpatine. But the parallel story Rey sees doesn't really exist, and her heart breaks as she learns the truth: Kylo Ren killed Snoke not to defeat the First Order, but [[TheStarscream to usurp it]].

** When Kylo Ren tells Rey his plans, he extends his hand to her and tells her that WeCanRuleTogether now, ending his speech with a shaky "Please". The words he uses are similar to Anakin's when he tried to get Padmé to join him after he had fallen to the dark side, but the look on his face and his body language are completely different.

** When Rey realises his intentions after she had grown to care for and even love him she just looks at him in utter sadness, begging him in a quiet, choked voice not to do this. It reminded several viewers of the equally emotional scene in ''Revenge of the Sith'' when Padmé futilely pleaded with Anakin to come back and to not go down a path she could not follow.
* By the time the ''Raddus''[='=]s shields are about to give out, Poe and his closest allies have resorted to holding Vice-Admiral Holdo and her closest allies at gunpoint, because they won't agree on how to handle a desperate situation that the ''fate of the entire galaxy'' hinges on. When Leia has finished recovering, she approaches Poe, and Poe feels relief for a moment...only for Leia to blast Poe unconscious and have his body brought aboard a shuttle against his wishes. Remember how in ''Film/RogueOne'' the Rebel Alliance was hopeless to the point of infighting and nearly [[DespairEventHorizon giving up]]? Picture that, except smack dab in the middle of cosmic nowhere.

* Admiral Holdo's HeroicSacrifice, and her emotional farewell with Leia. At first Holdo is being set up as a foil to Leia and by proxy, Dameron. Seemingly passive to Leia's active response, Dameron denounces her as a coward. Then not only did Holdo prove him wrong by not only having a plan to ensure the survival of the remaining Resistance members, but she also stayed behind to pilot the main ship to provide a distraction for the First Order. Then she managed to wreck Snoke's private ship by ramming into it while accelerating to ''lightspeed'' in one of the most badass [[TakingYouWithMe suicide takedowns]] in film history, thus saving them all.

** Right before that, when R2 activates, and Luke turns around, wide-eyed, and disbelievingly says "R2???" He sounds just like the 19-year-old farmboy from the original trilogy again, if just for a second. Then he laughs, so happy to see who was probably his closest companion among the original trilogy cast but there's so much pain in it. He knows that things can never be the same as they were because of everything he's been through and lost.

** The scene when Leia and Luke meet begins with Leia joking that she [[CallBack "changed [her] hair."]] Hilarious when you see the movie, but when you crack open the visual dictionary, you find out WHY Leia changed her hairstyle between movies... [[FunnyAneurysmMoment She's in mourning for Han.]]

** When combined with her Force-vision underneath the island, this revelation becomes absolutely ''devastating'' for Rey. For the last two movies, Rey has been desperately searching for meaning to her life, looking for a place to belong. She looks to legends like Han, Leia and Luke, asking them to tell her where she belongs. Rey might well have been expecting some grand revelation to come from the Mirror vision. For her, finding out she was a chosen one or special based on her heritage would be a ''good'' thing, because then at least she could believe she was fitting into some grand plan. But she's not. Luke has no answers for Rey. Her Force-vision shows nothing but herself. She ''isn't'' TheChosenOne like Anakin or the child of TheChosenOne like Luke or Kylo. She's ''not'' part of some HeroicLineage. [[TheUnchosenOne She's just a girl from nowhere]].

* For a brief few minutes we don't just see a path to redemption for Kylo Ren, we get a glimpse of the hero he could have been. Rey might well believe that her vision could come true. And then she discovers just how deeply he's tied to his ideology, and he's willing to let the resistance die along with the rest of the things from the past.
** When Rey realises his intentions, after she had grown to care for and even love him she just looks at him in utter sadness, begging him in a quiet, choked voice not to do this. It reminded several viewers of the equally emotional scene in ''Revenge of the Sith'' when Padme futilely pleaded with Anakin to come back to not go down a path she could not follow.

* Admiral Holdo's HeroicSacrifice, and her emotional farewell with Leia. At first Holdo is be set up as a foil to Leia and by proxy, Dameron. Seemingly passive to Leia's active response, Dameron denounces her as a coward. Then not only did Holdo prove him wrong by not only having a plan to ensure the survival of the remaining Resistance members, she also stayed behind to pilot the main ship to provide a distraction for the First Order. Then she managed to wreck Snoke's private ship by ramming into it while accelerating to ''lightspeed'' in one of the most badass [[TakingYouWithMe suicide takedowns]] in film history, thus saving them all.
** The scene where she discovers that the First Order know about the evacuating transports and are easily destroying them one by one shows her nearing breakdown, pleading desperately for the evacuation to continue because there is nothing else to be done.
** The look on her face just before she pushes that lever... She knows she's facing her own death, and the combined determination and sorrow are so clear in her expression, because she CAN'T allow any more of her rebels to die. She faces her death with absolute dignity. This is juxtaposed with the mutinous rebels (whom Poe personally turned against Holdo) thinking Holdo is running, while Poe realizes, "No she isn't," in the most horrified hushed tone he's ever used. Too late, he's realized just how badly he underestimated Holdo, how badly ''he'' threw a monkey wrench into her plans (thus necessitating her HeroicSacrifice), and the enormity of what she's about to do.

* R2-D2 plays Leia's old message from ''Film/ANewHope''. Luke looks so sad and ashamed of himself when he hears, "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope." once more. This is what finally motivates him to train Rey, likely to honor his old mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi one last time. It's also a TearJerker in the meta sense of course, thanks to Carrie Fisher's passing (and, for that matter, Leia's final moments in ''Film/RogueOne'').

* Kylo's order to aim every gun available and fire on Luke, followed by his pure, unbalanced rage displayed when he confronted him on the ground. Nothing else the viewer has seen up to this point has made him that angry for so long. It's clear that Kylo once truly respected, trusted and looked up to Luke, and the rage displayed comes from terrible pain over Luke's betrayal. In this light, that betrayal, however momentary, seems to be very likely what turned him to the dark side more than Snoke's manipulations. When Hux commands their forces to stop, while it's due to the fact that they're concentrating an excess amount of artillery on a single human, he also sounds like [[EvenEvilHasStandards he's doing so because their shelling has turned into straight-up cruelty]].
** Likewise, when he sees the Millennium Falcon come to the Resistance' aid during the battle, his order to "BLOW THAT PIECE OF JUNK OUT OF THE SKY!!" is full of such rage and hatred for his father's beloved ship. He probably spent most of his childhood on that ship. Though it would make sense that he's not too happy about [[DramaticIrony seeing the Falcon of all things being used against him]] [[BerserkButton to foil his plans]].

* By the end of the film, Leia has lost many people dear to her (including her husband, her brother and close friends), the New Republic that she spent decades rebuilding has collapsed, her army has been reduced to a mere dozen and her son is apparently beyond redemption, all in the span of a few days.

** Kylo tries one last time to reach out to Rey through their Force Bond, and gets a silent, hard, and disappointed look in return. Judging from the expression on his face, even he seems to know how much he deserves it.

** When Kylo Ren tells Rey his plans, he extends his hand to her and tells her that WeCanRuleTogether now, ending his speech with a shaky "Please". The words he uses are similar to Anakin's when he tried to get Padme to join him after he had fallen to the dark side, but the look on his face and his body language are completely different.

** When do we last see Kylo Ren? Standing triumphantly at the head of his new army? Nope. He's kneeling on the floor, staring hollowly at his father's dice. He's gotten what he wanted, [[PyrrhicVictory but it doesn't seem like it was worth it]]. This is only emphasized by the fact that the dice fade away in his hand, since they weren't truly there.

* While it might be more of a bittersweet kind of tears than most of the entries on this page, it's impossible not to get choked up when Leia uses the Force to pull herself back to the bridge of the ''Raddus'' after being blown out into space. It's an incredibly emotional moment, not just because we're finally getting to see Leia using the Force, but because [[AuthorExistenceFailure Carrie Fisher's death]] ensures that she never will again. One last [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome grand hurrah for our Princess.]] [[SincerityMode We'll miss you.]]

* A brief one, but there is a shot of Luke's X-wing that he used throughout the entire original trilogy submerged and encrusted with sea creatures. Seeing one of the most iconic movie spaceships like this is sad in and of itself but it's also a rather poetic metaphor for how Luke considers himself done with being a hero. And thanks to his death, it will stay there forever, as a memorial.

* Luke's reaction to Rey's power. To hear Luke Skywalker, the biggest, most idealistic [[TheHero Hero]] since day one, the guy who [[Film/ANewHope destroyed the Death Star]], [[Film/ReturnOfTheJedi redeemed his father when all hope was lost]] and, [[Franchise/StarWarsLegends in another world]], led the Jedi to new heights, talking about his past with such regrets is soul-crushing.

** The look on her face just before she pushes that lever... She knows she's facing her own death, and the combined determination and sorrow are so clear in her expression, because she CAN'T allow any more of her rebels to die. You know she's got to be scared deep down, but she faces her death with absolute dignity. This is juxtaposed with one of the mutinous rebels (whom Poe personally turned against Holdo) thinking Holdo is running, while Poe realizes, "No she isn't," in the most horrified hushed tone he's ever used. Too late, he's realized just how badly he underestimated Holdo, how badly ''he'' threw a monkey wrench into her plans (thus necessitating her HeroicSacrifice), and the enormity of what she's about to do.