Have you ever wondered which Star Wars characters would show up on Luke Skywalker's DNA match list? Would he be a match to Owen and Beru Lars? How much DNA would he share with Darth Vader?
These are important questions, and I've got the answers! Plus, find a Star Wars family tree.
The Star Wars Genealogy Tree of Luke Skywalker
Before we hop into Luke Skywalker's DNA match list, it's important to take a quick look at his family tree. People who are closely related to us, just like the people shown on the Skywalker family tree, always show up as genetic relatives on DNA tests.
The Star Wars Genealogy Tree below shows only the biological relatives of Luke Skywalker. The ones we know about, at least!
There is that lingering question about Rey...
Now, let's take a look to see how those seven biological relatives (minus "The Force") would show up on Luke's DNA results match list.
Who is related to Luke Skywalker by blood?
If we were to take a look at Luke Skywalker's DNA match list, we would see the following people:
- Shmi Skywalker
- Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader), assuming we could get him to take a test
- Ruwee Naberrie
- Jobal Naberrie
- Padme Amidala
- Leia Organa
- Kylo Ren
It's good to remember that these people would only show up on his DNA match list if they, too, took autosomal DNA tests.
How much DNA would Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia share?
Since Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia are fraternal twins, they will match on a DNA test just like any other siblings. As full siblings (and twins, of course!) they share the same parents.
Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia would share as little as 33% and as much as 50% of their DNA. This is normal and is within the range of what full siblings share.
The reason that Luke and Leia won't share 100% (or even a guaranteed 50%) of their DNA with each other even though they have the same parents is because of the way that DNA is inherited.
Luke and Leia both inherited 50% of Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker's DNA, but it wasn't an identical 50%. A great deal of their DNA is identical, but not all of it.
In other words, Princess Leia inherited some DNA from Padme and Anakin that Luke didn't inherit. Luke also inherited some DNA from Padme and Anakin that Leia didn't inherit.
Cool fact: If Luke and Leia were identical twins, they would share 100% of their DNA with each other.
How much DNA would Luke Skywalker and Shmi Skywalker share?
Luke Skywalker and his grandmother, Shmi, would share approximately 25% of their DNA. They could share as little as about 18%, and as much as about 32%, however.
The reason for the wide range of possible shared DNA between these two relatives is because of the random way in which DNA is inherited. There is no way to know if Luke Skywalker would have inherited more DNA from Shmi and less from his Naberrie grandparents, or vice versa.
There is one major caveat in this discussion, however. There is some debate about the identity of Darth Vader's father.
Before the last three movies in the trilogy, it seemed possible, or even likely, that Darth Vader's father could have been "the force", since his mother claimed that there was no father.
However, we later saw that Kylo Ren was able to wield the force in a manner that, objectively speaking, appeared to be at least as powerful as Darth Vader. Since we know that Kylo Ren had two parents, it's possible that Darth Vader had a father as well as a mother.
In other words, we can't exclude the possibility that Darth Vader had a human father.
In the case that Darth Vader isn't completely human, we don't know for sure how much DNA he would have inherited from his mother. Humans have 23 chromosomes and pass down half of the DNA on each chromosome to each offspring, but we don't know how having "the force" as a parent would affect this process.
If Darth Vader isn't completely human, or if he inherited DNA only from his mother (and not "The Force"), then we could assume that Shmi Skywalker would share as much DNA with Luke as would a parent.
This is because Darth Vader would have passed down his mother's DNA almost completely intact to Luke.
How much DNA would Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader share?
As I mentioned above, there is debate about whether Darth Vader is actually 100% human, so it definitely makes analysis of his DNA a little more complicated.
Assuming he is 100% human, he would share almost exact 50% of his DNA with Luke Skywalker. Fathers and mothers share just about exactly 50% of their DNA with their children.
In my opinion, it makes the most sense that Darth Vader is human because he was able to have a child with Padme Amidala. Species typically have to have the same number of chromosomes to reproduce, and Vader's ability to reproduce with Padme is evidence that he was, indeed, human.
Is Luke Skywalker related biologically to Owen Lars?
Luke Skywalker was raised by his adoptive parents, Owen and Beru Lars. Owen Lars was the biological child of Shmi Skywalker's husband, Cliegg Lars, and his first wife.
Since we do not know of any biological connection between the Lars family and Luke, we have to assume that they would not show up on his DNA match list.
Is there a biological connection between Luke and his loving adoptive parents perhaps further back than shown in the basic family tree above? Anything is possible.
Both the Lars, Skywalker, and Naberrie families had ancestry on
Tatooine, after all. We don't know the family tree details going back far enough to rule this out for sure.
There may even have been endogamy!
If they are related, they would show up as distant cousins on a DNA test, at best. This is because we don't share DNA with all of our distant relatives.
Interestingly, the more distantly related a relative is to us, the less likely it is that we will share DNA. This is why we wouldn't see all of our relatives on our DNA match lists.
How to find out who is on your DNA match list?
Now that you know who would show up on Luke Skywalker's DNA match list, and how much DNA he might share with those relatives, you might be curious about your own DNA.
If you want to discover genetic relatives and learn about your family's ancestral background, a DNA test from Ancestry DNA is sure to be an amazing experience.
Tens of millions of people in the United States and around the world have tested their DNA with companies like Ancestry DNA, 23andMe, MyHeritage DNA, and Family Tree DNA.
If you were to test your DNA, how many of these would be on your match list? Will all of your family members show up?
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this analysis of Luke Skywalker's DNA match list, and that it helped you learn a little bit about DNA. Plus, I hope that you are inspired to see who would show up on your list!
As always, if you have any questions about something that you read in this post, or want to know if Kylo Ren's children would show up on Luke Skywalker's DNA match list, join us in the discussion below.
Thanks for being here today 🙂