After waiting three months since his reveal, Luke has finally come out… and his story tells us absolutely nothing about Luke’s future. The good news is that Luke’s story doesn’t give me the same feeling of rage that Akira’s story did. The bad news is I don’t feel anything from his story at all. I’ve been hyped for Capcom to reveal SOMETHING about him that would really make Street Fighter 6 stand out… and they didn’t do that. They’re playing it extremely close to the vest. Everything seems deliberate and more controlled, as if revealing anything at all will somehow ruin the experience of Street Fighter 6, or at the very least restrict the story’s development. Perhaps the thinking is “if we put a definite plot-point in, that means we have to follow up on it, and we don’t want to do that”.
This, however, would be an incredibly stupid mindset to have. Yes, the characters would be fluid and their stories would be open for interpretation, but without a solid, consistent plotline that’s more than just “Bison/Gill/Seth/G wants to take over the world”, they’d just be copying the Smash formula. The thing is they have a pretty solid core storywise for what they could potentially do. Sakura and Karin would be the perfect main protagonists for Street Fighter 6, as the next hero and her rich supporter. Ibuki is the friend who’s up to something. G is the next big villain. Rashid can and should be a driving force in the plot. Ryu, Ken, Cammy, Chun-Li, and Guile can fill in the support roles. Juri and Vega can antagonize everyone. Gill and the Illuminati can be a powerful force who are bound by their tenets or even by Shadaloo. There’s a lot Capcom can do here.
And, yes, even Luke can and will play a huge role! Luke doesn’t seem like a major character, but his importance in SF6 comes down to one person, the most fascinating character in his story:
Luke’s father, Robert, dies after rescuing his son and a bunch of civilians from a time bomb that was set to explode in the middle of a shopping mall. While this gives Luke the drive to join the military and eventually fight his own path, the truth is Luke appears to be lost, even with Guile’s wisdom.
Since we can’t say for sure what Luke’s eventual role will be, we can’t really make any assumptions from his time in the military outside of the idea that Guile trained him. Based on what I’ve written in the past, however, there seems to be one subtle point that Capcom is edging towards: someone’s gonna get turned into a Q.
Luke says his dad was a very quiet person, and the Q we see in Third Strike is indeed very quiet. Also, when we see him, Robert takes a pose that’s similar to one of Q’s win poses.
This doesn’t mean much on it’s own, but there is something else Q is known for: having a combo that turns him into a literal time bomb, Total Destruction.
If Robert turns out to be Q, then there’s a sad irony here: he’d be forced to kill others using the same method that killed him.
However, this is not the end of the story. It’s been shown that there are multiple Qs, so he likely wouldn’t be the only one who had this ability. Assuming this to be true, the question now is what allows them to blow themselves up? Certainly, G’s powers could explain this. They can conceivably be used to cause an explosive force to erupt from within the Qs bodies. I’ve stated before that G could have the ability to give his powers to others. There seems to be a far simpler explanation, though: the Qs are all equipped with improvised explosive devices, much like the one that killed Robert.
Luke stated that the bomb that killed his dad was set off by terrorists. What we don’t know is if these terrorists are a random group, an established group in Street Fighter canon, or a new group that will try to compete with the established groups in Street Fighter 6. If Robert is Q, though, then it’s pretty clear who the IED belonged to: G.
This would, in turn, make G an ecoterrorist since he would say he set the bomb off in the name of the earth.
Granted, this is speculation, but it’s also the only theory that fits what’s been established by canon. No other villain in the Street Fighter series attacks people at random. Bison, Seth, and Gill have all run organizations that not only wanted to remain secret, but had a plan in mind. Blowing up random people in a shopping mall would be considered bush league and reckless by Shadaloo, S.I.N., and the Illuminati, all of whom have grander plans.
G, on the other hand, would have a reason to want to kill random people: he can revive them and turn them into Qs. I’ve stated in the past that G may have control over life and death and, much like the devil, can grant deals that allow a person to survive a traumatic event in exchange for their servitude. G would basically be able to get a lot of people at once for his Q army this way. He can potentially transform still-living people into Qs as well by shaking their hands, but this method appears to be much, much slower. As for why blowing up people would be faster, it could be that he has a link to the afterlife that allows him to visit each dying person spiritually; if G is based off of Baron Samedi, this is the best answer I can give you. There’s also the idea of putting the blown up people’s parts back together again, but this wouldn’t appear to be a problem for G as he can likely manifest them in a new body or at the very least put their parts back together very quickly.
Basically, whatever G does to create his zombies is far more effective than what Kolin did for Nash.
The possibility remains that there could be an ecoterrorist group that hasn’t been revealed yet. There are a ton of groups in Street Fighter that Capcom should really be focusing on, though, if they want to keep things consistent, like the Glade of Ninjas. There’s a chance the Glade could be the group that killed Robert, but it’s Ibuki herself that seems to discount this idea. As Luke and Ibuki exchange in their win quotes to each other:
Luke to Ibuki: “Frickin’ ninja kids messing ’round with bombs…”
Ibuki to Luke: “Hmph! They’re fireworks, not bombs! And… I’m not some kid, you know!”
They may not like each other, but Ibuki, even if she was evil, wouldn’t really have a reason to kill Luke’s dad. Plus, she wouldn’t have been old enough at the time. Moreso, this just wouldn’t be the Glade’s style, either, since they’re also very secretive. Ibuki may turn to the dark side at some point, but neither she nor the Glade would do this.
It could also be that it was just random terrorists that killed Robert, with G picking up the body later, or it could be that Robert has no importance to the plot at all, isn’t Q, and Capcom’s gonna do something completely different to throw everything into disarray. I would say this is plausible, but there’s something else we have to remember: Robert wouldn’t be the only person in Street Fighter V to go through an end-of-life event. There’s another character who has more relevance, and because of the way Capcom sets things up, there isn’t a chance that they let her stay dead.
März and Robert are in the same boat. Robert died from being blown up, and there’s a chance that März died from her fall when taking out F.A.N.G, although it doesn’t really matter if she died or not considering G would have collected her one way or the other. The same could be said about Rashid’s friend, who was killed by F.A.N.G; Nash, who blew himself up fighting Bison; and, even though he didn’t appear in V, Dorai, Chun-Li’s father, would also qualify as someone who could come back from the dead as a Q. In other words, there’s a very good chance that people who have died in the past come back as Qs; even Goutetsu and the first Geki could return as undead zombies fighting for G! Having all of these people come back also give living characters a reason to fight G, including Chun-Li, Cammy, and Akuma.
So, what we’re looking at here is that G is a geomancer, a pyromancer, a necromancer, an energy vampire, a hypnotist, and possibly even a time traveler. G isn’t a threat. He is THE threat. Street Fighter may have angels like Gill, demons like Akuma, psychos like Bison, and constructs like Seth, but none of them have power that is anything like G’s, who seems to have EVERY power under the sun.
“So, what does this have to do with Luke?” Everything. Luke himself is a reference to Q. He shifts his feet much like Q does. His Outlaw Kick looks like Q’s kick. Even his special moves are Q-like. Luke’s Sand Blaster looks like Q’s High Speed Barrage minus the projectiles, and his Critical Art, Annihilator, is a double reference – it looks like Q’s Critical Combo Attack while being similarly named to Q’s Total Destruction.
So will Luke become Q? Technically, he already is! But there are two more things to consider that push the “Luke is Q” theory. The first is G’s win quote to Luke:
“The path you have chosen as a citizen of Earth will serve to aid the President of the World.”
G isn’t screwing around here. There’s no flamboyance. No “we are one” statements. He’s outright saying, “You’re gonna help me take over the world.” It’s downright out of character for him, but that’s the point. This is G’s true nature. This single sentence in a sea of weird, hammy ones tells you right away who G is. Everything else is an act.
The second thing to consider involves Robert. Let’s say he’s the Q we know from Third Strike. What does this mean for Luke? It means something that Luke says in his story mode will end up coming true.
He’s going to get his wish.
Street Fighter Game Lore Theories 