EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT LIGHTSABERS IN STAR WARS
Fundamentally, Star Wars is a space fantasy tale consisting of several exciting, exhilarating, and hopeful adventures. And without a magical sword, what kind of fantasy novel is it? These tales are incomplete without them: King Arthur's Excalibur, Jon Snow's Longclaw in Game of Thrones, and Aragorn's Andúril and Frodo's Sting in The Lord of the Rings.
Lightsabers help our heroes and villains in Star Wars on their battle and self-discovery adventures. These weapons are legendary, unique to their creators, and originate in a distant galaxy's oldest facets.
They have appeared in every film in the series, beginning with 1977's Star Wars: A New Hope. Let's find out more about the stories behind these cool "laser swords."
The next movie in the series is called The Rise of Skywalker. It will be released in December. Learn more about their origins, significance to our central characters, and potential future developments.
How are lightsabers made?
In the show Star Wars: The Clone Wars, there is a special event called the "gathering." During this ritual, a Jedi mentor takes young Jedi trainees, also known as "younglings," to the planet Ilum.
The younglings came to gather kyber crystals from the hallowed, frozen spot. These are uncommon crystals that grow organically and are connected to the Force. According to Yoda, these crystals are "the heart of the lightsaber" and aid Jedi in focusing the Force.
Younglings enter a cave on Ilum during the gathering, and they have a certain length of time to locate their crystal. Jedi can only see the crystal intended for them in the cave, and their attraction to it is based on their unique link with the Force. The procedure is mainly intuitive. The youngling passes the gathering phase and advances to the assembling phase if they can harvest the crystal within the given time.
Examples?
In The Clone Wars, Huyang is like the Ollivander of Star Wars, helping younglings choose the perfect hilt for their lightsabers. (Huyang also has a memory bank that records the names of the Jedi who created every lightsaber throughout history.)
The young Jedi needs to use the Force to "awaken" their kyber crystal. This activates the lightsaber after they have chosen their hilt. Choosing the hilt is a simple and intuitive step.
Getting a kyber crystal can be accomplished more than merely traveling to Ilum. Ezra, a Force user in Star Wars Rebels, gets his own after finding an old Jedi Temple on Lothal. Upon passing the Force's test, a kyber materializes and soars into his grasp. It shows that if a deserving Force user wants it to be, crystals will find their way to them.
What is the purpose of a lightsaber?
"This is a Jedi Knight's weapon," Obi-Wan Kenobi stated in A New Hope. It's not as haphazard or awkward as a blaster. A sophisticated tool for a more refined era.
Legend has it that lightsabers existed for thousands of years before the events of the Skywalker trilogy. However, the precise origin is unknown.
They work well in battle, as well as in defense and protection. The blades are mighty and deadly because they can cut through almost anything, including blaster bolts. During the Clone Wars, lightsabers became increasingly common when the Jedi rose to the rank of general in the Grand Army of the Republic.
Light Side Jedi swords and Dark Side Sith blades clash in the movies as the sabers are utilized as combat weapons. After Emperor Palpatine ordered the execution of most Jedi, lightsabers became hard to find in the galaxy."
Why are Sith lightsabers red?
The hue of the kyber crystal determines the color of the lightsaber blade. Blue is the most common color for a Jedi lightsaber, but we also see green, yellow, and purple blades on occasion. These colors represent a Jedi's connection to the Force.
Conversely, red lightsabers are only used by the Dark Side. At their essence, they are abnormal since kyber never becomes red. The Sith or Dark Sider "bleeds" or corrupts the kyber crystal by removing its light. This is the source of the hue.
Having been trained in none of the Jedi's traditions, Sith usually takes their crystals after killing the "rightful bearers" of them. In the Expanded Universe, red lightsabers were made with synthetic kyber crystals. Disney removed this from the official story after buying Lucasfilm.
In the Expanded Universe, red lightsabers were made with synthetic kyber crystals. Disney removed this from the official story after buying Lucasfilm.
In the new canon, synthetic crystals are still used, but they are not linked to the Sith. They are actually banned because they are too unpredictable.
What are some of the familiar lightsabers in Star Wars?
In Star Wars, Anakin Skywalker's blue legacy saber is the most well-known and identifiable lightsaber. It was first shown to audiences in A New Hope when Obi-Wan Kenobi presented it to Luke Skywalker, Anakin's son. The saber has been a significant part of each of the Star Wars trilogies thus far:
- In the prequels, we see Anakin using it.
- In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke loses it during a battle with Vader.
- The Force Awakens reappears when it calls out to Rey in Maz Kanata's castle.
In The Last Jedi, Rey and Kylo Ren broke the saber in a battle. But in The Rise of Skywalker teasers, Rey fixed it, showing that it made it to the end of the story."
Though it first appears in Return of the Jedi, Luke's replacement lightsaber—the green-bladed sword—is another well-known one. (The Last Jedi does feature a brief appearance for it.)Another notable one is Darth Vader's red saber.
The same is true of Darth Maul's double-bladed Sith saber and Mace Windu's distinctive purple-bladed weapon. While Ahsoka's two white sabers are unique because they symbolize a Force user who is neither Sith nor Jedi, Count Dooku's is well-known for its bent hilt.
What about the crossguard saber?
Kylo Ren's saber is arguably Star Wars mythology's most inventive and contentious. Fans debated its crossguard style, questioning its utility when it first surfaced in teaser trailers for The Force Awakens. According to canon, this saber's ancient design dates back to the Jedi and Sith's long-ago conflict known as the Scourge of Malachor. Unlike most sabers, the blade is uneven and sizzles due to a shattered kyber crystal.
Ben Solo is shown to have owned a blue saber in a flashback scene in The Last Jedi. Given that Ben Solo later joined the Dark Side and changed his name to Kylo Ren, he likely "bled" the crystal from the saber, breaking it in the process. This insane sword has come to symbolize Kylo Ren as a persona—erratic, fractured, torn between the light and the dark.
Will we see new lightsabers in The Rise of Skywalker?
Rey gives up the repaired Skywalker legacy lightsaber but is still without her own. Given that the movie is titled The Rise of Skywalker, she might only utilize this lightsaber, carrying on the Skywalker family tradition.
Or, one day, she'll make one for herself. Perhaps Kylo Ren will inherit his grandfather's saber if he achieves redemption, as many fans believe he will and as suggested by the movie's title. This would also allow Rey to make her own. Since we first saw Rey with her trademark staff, fans have highly anticipated that she will someday wield a double-bladed saber; perhaps that will happen.
If you include the Dark Rey saber from the D23 teaser for The Rise of Skywalker, technically, it has already happened. Even though this is all simply a vision of some kind, we see a new lightsaber with a jagged red blade similar to Kylo's based on a design initially seen in The Clone Wars.
Rey and Kylo are the only Force-sensitive characters in the story besides Leia. Will The Rise of Skywalker introduce us to any new Force users? Given that the first two movies in the sequel trilogy alluded to an "awakening" of the Force—The Last Jedi even closes with a stinger hinting at the upcoming Jedi generation—it's a possibility. Depending on where and how far into the future the tale takes us, if we see more of that in the movie, we might see multiple new lightsabers by the time it's over.
