2 Theories About Ben Solo's Blue Lightsaber in 'The Last Jedi'

Lightsabers have always played a significant part in Star Wars, acting as both weapons and beacons of Force wielders’ intentions. Red is bad; blue, green, and (sometimes) purple are good.

This post contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Read on at your own risk.

Ben Solo, who would eventually morph into Dark side emo child Kylo Ren, once had a blue lightsaber. Audiences see it a couple of times in Star Wars: The Last Jedi but, otherwise, the blue lightsaber’s location post-Ren is a mystery. What happened to Ben Solo’s blue lightsaber?

The only look we get at Ben Solo’s pre-Ren lightsaber is in the flashbacks to the night he destroyed Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy. Ben uses a silver-hilted blue lightsaber to parry Luke’s green saber, supposedly to stop Luke’s poorly thought out and impulsive assassination attempt. Moments later, Ben pulls his hut down on top of Luke, probably hoping to crush him under the avalanche of stones.

Luke lives (that time) and we never see Ben Solo’s lightsaber again.

Here are two pretty legit theories as to where that blue lightsaber is.

Duh, clearly Kylo’s had the same lightsaber this whole time

What if Kylo Ren’s crossguard lightsaber is a modified version of Ben Solo’s original lightsaber? Sure, the hilts look nothing alike and it can’t have been easy to take a single-blade saber like Ben’s blue one and transform it into a copy of the Great Scourge of Malachor’s saber. Despite the change in design, though, there’s some canon to back this explanation up.

E.K. Johnston’s 2016 novel Ahsoka introduced a new canon explanation for why the Sith have red-hued lightsabers in Star Wars. Previously, it was suggested that Sith sabers were made with synthetic Kyber crystals. The new canon makes things a bit more complicated and a whole lot darker.

Since Ahsoka established the new canon, Sith don’t have the same connection to Kyber crystals that Jedi do, so, in order to get a lightsaber, a Sith has to take a lightsaber from a Jedi (read: take by force; aka, most likely kill the Jedi). The crystal in the Jedi’s lightsaber will fight against its captor and the Sith is forced to bend the crystal to their will, which results in the crystal “bleeding” and turning red.

So, as long as we can believe that Kylo took the time to reconstruct the hilt of his old blue lightsaber, then maybe we can just say he used the same crystal. And since Kylo’s crystal is famously cracked (which results in his blade spitting sparks everywhere), maybe the crystal didn’t take too kindly to its master turning to Dark side.

The blue lightsaber is hidden and will make an appearance in Episode IX

General Leia Organa acquiesces in The Last Jedi that her son is “gone,” that Ben Solo has fallen from grace and is truly a servant of the Dark side. But Luke, who was once responsible for bringing their father, Darth Vader, back to the Light, tells her that no one’s ever really lost. And isn’t that always the message of Star Wars? No matter how bleak things may look, the Light will always shine through the Dark (even if it takes 20 years to do so).

It still truly seems like there’s a chance that there’s Light still living somewhere in Kylo Ren. Luke senses it, Rey senses it, and, despite his new position as the Supreme Leader of the First Order, Kylo is still clearly on the fence about his place in the galaxy. He’s filled with turmoil — the same kind of turmoil that eventually turned his idol and grandfather, Vader, back to the Light.

Because Kylo has all this conflict going on inside of him, it seems likely that he’d have kept his blue lightsaber from his Jedi Academy days tucked away for safekeeping. He may be all about “letting the past die,” but no one says something that often is totally convinced of it themselves. If Kylo does turn back to the Light in Star Wars: Episode IX, then we might get a chance to see that blue lightsaber once again.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now in theaters.