We were left speechless when Luke Skywalker returned to a galaxy far, far away in The Mandalorian season 2 finale. As it turns out, so was Mark Hamill – as the prolific voice actor didn’t say any of the younger Luke’s lines during his cameo appearance.
"Something people didn't realize is that his voice isn't real," Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau revealed during a new Disney Gallery episode about the making of the season 2 finale (H/T Collider).
"His voice, the young Luke Skywalker voice, is completely synthesized using an application called Respeecher."
Favreau went on to explain how the process worked: they rifled through the archives to create a construct of Mark Hamill’s earlier Luke Skywalker voice.
"So I had archival material from Mark in that era. We had clean recorded ADR from the original films, a book on tape he'd done from those eras, and then also Star Wars radio plays he had done back in that time," Favreau said. "I was able to get clean recordings of that, feed it into the system, and they were able to slice it up and feed their neural network to learn this data."
That all goes to show how rapidly computer-generated technology is evolving. We’re probably just a few years away from being able to clone Mark Hamill at this point. That would be handy.
Next up in the live-action space: The Book of Boba Fett this December. The Mandalorian season 3 is set to launch on Disney Plus further down the line.
For more from the franchise, here are all the upcoming Star Wars movies and shows still in the works.
