No one understands fan culture on the same level as Mark Hamill. The Star Wars hero, who will reprise his role as Luke Skywalker in the upcoming Episode VIII, holds a unique position as both the object of fan idolization and an avid, dyed-in-the-wool pop-culture obsessive. On his new Web series, Mark Hamill’s Pop Culture Quest (available at Comic-Con HQ), Hamill seeks out fellow memorabilia collectors, giving viewers an up-close look at such treasure troves as the DC Comics archive and Bob Burns’s movie prop collection. Inevitably, he encounters touchstones from his own past, including the original Return of the Jedi lightsaber (now in the collection of Prop Store’s Brendan Allinger — watch the clip below). Pop Culture Quest is a delightful binge watch for geeks of any stripe (there are even car and sneaker collectors in the mix) — though every passing glimpse of a Princess Leia doll now brings to mind the heartbreaking loss of Carrie Fisher, Hamill’s longtime friend and co-star. Hamill spoke with Yahoo Movies about losing Fisher, aging along with Star Wars, and the joys of bonding with fellow pop-culture nerds.

Watch Mark Hamill reunite with his Return of the Jedi lightsaber in a clip from Pop Culture Quest:

Yahoo Movies: Pop Culture Quest seems like a natural extension of the role that you’ve taken on as a sort of ambassador to fan culture. How did that end up happening?

Hamill: I think it just was a natural progression, because I was a Famous Monsters magazine kid. I loved reading about science fiction and fantasy. My favorite movie as a kid was, and probably still is, the 1933 King Kong. So I think the fans understand that I’m one of them. I’m not a poseur. I was going to these conventions before I ever worked with George Lucas. When I was in college I saw in the college newspaper they were showing silent films like Metropolis and M, films that I’d read a lot about, at the Ambassador Hotel at the [comics] convention, and that started it all up, because I went for the films, and then I started seeing all these comics I had as a kid. And it got me into that whole scene.

You know, there’s a collector’s item out there — I was on a soap opera one time and one of the actors who came in to do a storyline arc was Kerwin Mathews, who played Sinbad in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, and I just freaked out! I was so excited. I was just peppering him with questions all day long about Ray Harryhausen and the skeleton fight, and he was really a sweet guy but he said, “Mark, I really have to concentrate on this scene, there’s so many lines. If you want to talk about this, we should get together outside of work.” So I said, “Oh, yeah, great, can I bring a tape recorder?” So we got together over the weekend and I spoke to him for a few hours. And I don’t remember how it happened, but it wound up being printed in a fanzine called FXRH: Film Effects by Ray Harryhausen. And this would have been, like, ’72, I’m guessing. It’s gotta be a collector’s item — I have a copy somewhere, I haven’t seen it in God knows how long; I don’t know where it is.

But that’s sort of my thoughts as to why I’ve gone and taken on that de facto role as ambassador for nerd-dom. Because you know, I was always the one that was most excited about the merchandising aspect. Harrison and Carrie didn’t really care — Carrie got a kick out of some of the stuff, Harrison was his usual eye-roll and aloof self. I’d be the one that would come running in saying, “Hey, you guys, I’m a mask on the back of Frosted Flakes!” or whatever it was. [Laughs]

Carrie did collect some Star Wars merchandise. I just watched the HBO documentary about her and Debbie Reynolds —

Oh, yeah, I’m not ready. Did she have a lot of Princess Leia stuff?

She had the life-size animated Princess Leia statue that we saw in the episode of Pop Culture Quest where you visited [the toy company] Gentle Giant. She called it a sex doll.

[Laughs] Well, she had a wonderful collection of really oddball things. I remember how — you know, she’s the queen of impulse buying. We were at kind of a flea market situation in London on one of our days off, this was back on the first film, and she saw these, the seven dwarves — not statues, but they were cutouts, like fiberboard. I don’t know, they might have been used in a movie theater when the movie first played. And she just immediately said, “Oh, I’ll take them!” And I thought, “Wow.” First of all, it was so impractical. And I loved the fact that she liked it, she got it, and she didn’t even think about “Where am I going to display these things?” Well, of course they’re on her wall now, in her house in the canyons.