The Empire Strikes Back

Special Edition Laserdisc Side 4 Chapter 20

Near the beginning of the film, Ben appears to Luke in a vision and instructs him to go the Dagobah system -- "There you will learn from Yoda, the Jedi master who instructed me."

Later, Luke and Artoo hold a conversation as Luke is setting a course for the Dagobah system. It almost appears that Luke can understand Artoo’s beeps, but I think it’s more likely that Luke is reading Artoo’s output on a monitor. The red type on the monitor is too fuzzy to read on my TV screen, but I think that’s what happening.

After crashing in a swamp, Luke says to Artoo:

L: Oh Artoo, what are we doing here? It’s like, something out of a dream. Maybe I’m just going crazy.

Later, after moving survival equipment from the cruiser to land, Luke says to Artoo just before Yoda appears:

L: This place gives me the creeps. Still, there’s something familiar about this place. I dunno. I feel like…

Y: Feel like what?

And that’s the end of any discussion by Luke that Dagobah is not a completely unknown place to him.

1) In later scenes, Dagobah will be revealed to be a place associated with visions. Perhaps Luke has had previous visions or dreams of Dagobah because the Force allowed him to see the future in his sleep, and he received glimpses of the place where he was to be trained to become a Jedi.

2) Or perhaps Luke has physically been to Dagobah before -- when he was a very small child, or, giving Lucas some latitude to tell a good story, when he was an infant. At any rate, these comments lead me to speculate that we will see a very young Luke on Dagobah in some way. Or perhaps we will just learn that Luke’s mother, Amidala we presume, will give birth on Dagobah. 

3) Or perhaps we'll see Anakin train to become a Jedi on Dagobah.  Perhaps Luke's premonitions will resonate for future audiences because of events they'll associate with Anakin.  And Yoda.  On Dagobah.

At any rate, these comments seem clearly important to the BS, and I suspect that when we’re viewing ESB as the fifth in a series, the comments will convey more significance than they do now. Future audiences, I think, will know exactly why Luke finds Dagobah familiar. The most likely explanation, I think, is that Lucas is using Luke’s comments to indicate that the Force gives the midichlorian-infected the ability to sense the future.