Luke, He Is Your Father

Event Hubs recently came out with a YouTube video that talked about the potential story of Street Fighter 6. John “Velociraptor” Guerrero and Jon “Catalyst” Grey speculated on G’s impact on the game as well as what they thought would happen regarding characters like Ryu and Sagat. If you’re into the story of fighting games, the video is worth checking out. https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2021/sep/16/street-fighter-6-story/

At 2:19, Velociraptor and Catalyst begin talking about the possibility of G and Q being the same person, and mentioned that G could end up becoming Q in a way similar to Anakin Skywalker becoming Darth Vader. While my readers would know that I do not subscribe to the G is Q theory, and while I am not all that interested in Star Wars considering I grew up a Trekkie, this conversation got the theory gears moving. So, after pulling an Adam Conover and pointing out a few things to the Event Hubs Twitter account, I took a step back and realized that my previous Luke is Q theory may not be off-base. The parallel here is that Darth Vader’s son was named Luke, and obviously, there’s the famous movie quote (that Vader never actually said), “Luke, I am your father.” The big question now is if these Star Wars references that people have memed about were intentional subtle plants by Capcom to get people talking about the otherwise bland design of their upcoming character.

It turns out that Luke may just be the best designed character they’ve ever made.

Whereas G is absolutely one of the greatest designed characters in Street Fighter, if not video game, history, Luke’s design seems to be more subtle. Capcom could be leaving clues in plain sight for people to speculate on, and if they are, Luke is a far more important character than even the developers are telling us.

One of my mutuals on Twitter, @Captain_Supreme, pointed out a pose that is shared between Luke and G.

After looking over everything that has been released on Luke so far, there may be something to it. We know that in his character trailer, Luke mentions that he wants to “become a man like him”. Who “him” is isn’t clarified, but as I’ve stated in the past, it might be G. https://manestreetblog.com/2021/08/04/the-street-fighter-gospel-of-luke/

There has been some talk of Luke being a current character’s kid. Some people are pointing to Nash or Guile being his father. Others have pointed to Luke’s star motifs and have concluded his dad is Joe from Street Fighter I.

While this might be the case, the truth is Joe isn’t exactly a role model to look up to. As stated in his official character profile, during his time as an undefeated kickboxer, he “ran into money problems and turned to violent crime to fix them.” https://game.capcom.com/cfn/sfv/column/112444?lang=en

Even if Joe went straight, it’s arguable that Luke could find a better role model than him, and in this day and age, who would be better than a popular internet influencer who owns a space station? However, maybe there’s more to this that we’re not seeing. Is it possible that Luke and G have much in common with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader? Is Street Fighter Luke’s chosen name more than just a subtle nod to Star Wars Luke?

In other words, is G Luke’s father?

Since it’s impossible to tell if there are any biological ties between the two, outside of certain traits like hair and physical mannerisms, we can at least speculate that G could at some point think of Luke as a son. With a lack of any canon story elements that could point us in the right direction, we have to rely on the admittedly circumstantial evidence we have. Fortunately for us, it’s visual.

Luke’s costumes could be a huge clue to who Luke is, and two in particular, his Story costume and Battle costume, may hold the information we need to find out what Capcom’s planning to do with this character before he’s released. His Story costume consists of mostly blue camouflage, indicating he was in the military at some point. However, looking at his vest, it looks like he made some modifications. With the lapels and rolled-up sleeves, it looks very similar to G’s black overcoat. This doesn’t mean much in the long run, but is nonetheless an interesting aesthetic. Also, it’s hard to tell at this point, but he looks to be carrying some sort of communication device on his leg, like a walkie-talkie. This could be of some significance, but at this point, Luke’s Story costume isn’t telling me too much.

His Battle costume, on the other hand, tells me more about Luke than his Story costume does, and before you say anything, no, it’s not canon, but it doesn’t have to be. Battle costumes tend to bring up a fact about a character we wouldn’t otherwise see. For example, although we don’t see her in a mission, Kolin wearing an infiltration outfit means she specializes in espionage.

The Battle costume expands on Luke’s background in a similar way: he seems to like basketball, and specifically Olympic basketball. Now, he could be up to shooting some hoops even though he’s wearing Timberlands (which is apparently a thing in New York???). However, it’s not the boots that are the clue here – it’s the jersey. He’s wearing a USA Basketball jersey with the number 14 on it.

“You’re really going the numerology route?” Not quite. Doing bizarre Illuminati math isn’t going to lead us anywhere. However, there appears to be a double meaning as to why the number 14 was chosen. Quite simply, it wasn’t chose randomly.

The first is that it’s a reference to Capcom USA and, more specifically, where they’re headquartered – San Francisco. On the current US Olympic basketball team, 14 is being used by a star NBA player, Draymond Green, who also plays for the Golden State Warriors, who are based in San Francisco.

This alone seems to be quite the coincidence, but the developers have said that Luke is the future of Street Fighter. If this is the case, then why does his number have a 4 in it? In Japan, the number 4 is considered very unlucky because it’s also the same word as “death”, shi. In China, where much of Japanese culture originated, the number 4 is still considered unlucky, but the number 14 is even more so, as it can be pronounced either as “is dead” or “will be dead” in Chinese depending on the speaker’s dialect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia

So, if what I’ve said about Luke being transformed into the Q from Third Strike holds true, Luke is destined to die, either actually or symbolically, at G’s hands.

“Why?,” you ask. “Why would G want to “kill” someone who he saw as a son?” Simple: it would hearken back to the biblical themes that the guys at Event Hubs talked about later on in the video I linked. They mentioned that, whereas Gill is the Jesus-like, messianic figure, G serves as the complete opposite, the Antichrist. More so, if Luke does end up being analogous to a son, then we have two figures of the Holy Trinity represented – the father in G and the son in Luke. This leaves us with the final piece of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Is there someone in Street Fighter who could represent this final part?

Well, it could be Gaia, who G talks about constantly, but Gaia hasn’t made a physical appearance. Ryu could be another option, but this seems unlikely as Ryu doesn’t work for G at all. Also, Ryu fights for good, and whatever G is doing looks to be the exact opposite of what good is supposed to be.

There is another concept akin to the Holy Trinity, the Unholy Trinity, which consists of the Devil, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. Capcom could have merged this concept with the Holy Trinity, with the Father and Antichrist being G, and the Son and False Prophet being Luke. So who would fit as someone who could be both the Devil and the Holy Spirit?

Only one person looks to fit this role, someone who is both evil and intangible.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what Oro and Dhalsim were discussing in Oro’s story mode.

I don’t like the idea that Bison is behind everything, and I don’t believe that this is just a grand scheme by Bison to use G as a puppet to control the world. This would mean the story would not have progressed much, if at all. Plus, G causing the apocalypse completely on his own would make for a much cooler story than him being a mere henchman.

That being said, Bison can still influence events to go his, or G’s, way. He can still take over people’s minds and terrify people into submission. He appears to have the ability to take control of their bodies as well, although everyone he’s tried to take over ended up being stronger than him. Most importantly, he can directly influence G and his actions, using his force of will to pass on to G his ambition.

Basically, he can drive G to more extreme things as need be. G would not have a problem with it, as he’d believe he was doing it of his own accord anyway. Whatever apocalyptic scenario G wanted, Bison would make sure he’d be able to do it.

Why would Bison want to help G like this? Because they want the same thing: to control the world. Bison would merely wait until G conquered everything, then he’d try to find a way to take over himself, getting stronger with the chaos that would be occuring due to the nature of Psycho Power. This is not out of Bison’s character – Shadaloo served as a similar means to control everything, and Bison didn’t have to lift a finger to do it, leaving him to watch as others took action for him.

Bison is either incredibly smart or incredibly lazy. However, even though Bison has a number of powers, including the ability to move throguh space, there is one power he doesn’t have: the ability to go through time. He is unable to stop or slow down time, as is evidenced by his aging and white hair before his body was destroyed by Ryu.

G, on the other hand, may have the ability to travel through time. This hasn’t been shown officially in the game yet, but since it’s been stated that Rose possesses the capability, it wouldn’t be too out of left field to say that G would have it, too. How would we know that G has the ability? First of all, his manner of dress fits more with the Victorian era than with modern day New York and India. Karin has a similar theme going on, but her dress is modernized – leggings would have been taboo in the 1800s.

Second of all, G keeps something on his person that is symbolic of time, something that we still don’t know is even going to play a role in G’s story, but something that is nonetheless too important too ignore – his pocket watch.

We don’t know what purpose the watch serves, but we do know that it likely holds some kind of power that G can use. We can see him using the watch with his left hand, behind Cody’s head, in this poster.

Since it’s unclear what purpose the watch serves, we can only guess that the watch involves time travel in some way. However, if G can indeed control time, then this explains one of the biggest differences between Luke and Q: their heights. It may just be that Luke is younger than we think he is. The U.S. Army accepts recruits as young as 17, and if Luke really is that young, it’s possible that he hasn’t completed puberty yet. He basically would be due for a growth spurt, and if G can control time, he can age Luke up instantaneously to make the growth spurt happen.

Being as young as he is, it makes sense that Luke acts like he’s 14.