'Rise of Skywalker' Theory Reveals the Shocking Origin of Kylo's Lightsaber

When The Rise of Skywalker finally arrives in theaters this December, the nature and origins of lightsabers could be important once again, especially since we got a glimpse at Dark Rey wielding a double-sided red lightsaber in the D23 trailer. But one new fan theory about Kylo Ren’s lightsaber could finally solve what feels like a plot hole from The Last Jedi: Whatever happened to Luke’s green lightsaber?

On Tuesday, YouTube account Star Wars Analyst published a new video making the compelling argument that Kylo Ren’s red crossguard lightsaber — which we know has a cracked kyber crystal as its power source — is actually derived from Luke’s green lightsaber prominently featured in Return of the Jedi.

In The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary, it’s confirmed that Kylo Ren’s lightsaber contains a “cracked kyber crystal that is the cause of [the] ragged, unstable appearance” of the central blade and the two smaller blades that comprise the crossguard. This new video grapples with where and how he acquired this crystal and developed the lightsaber’s design.

Kyber crystals are naturally colorless — fans might recall Jyn Erso’s clear crystal in Rogue One — but once attuned to a Jedi, they typically become green or blue with rare exceptions like Mace Windu’s purple. This has something to do with their spiritual alignment. In the Vader comics series, Palpatine explains that by pouring pain and agony into a crystal, it’ll “bleed” and become red. Traditionally, it’s a rite of passage for a Sith to kill a Jedi, steal their “good” crystal, and “bleed” it so it becomes red.

Snoke and Kylo Ren are not technically Sith, but they do share similar practices. The Star Wars Analyst theorizes that Kylo Ren was probably instructed by Snoke to take a different Jedi’s crystal, and that he wouldn’t just bleed the crystal of a random student at Luke’s Jedi Temple.

“I think that Kylo actually took Luke’s green crystal, making his lightsaber all the more significant,” he says. “When it comes to the Dark side, hatred is power.” Ben Solo’s hatred for Luke is what drove him to the Dark side, so having his own lightsaber be a constant reminder of that hatred would make it a source of great power.

There’s also plenty of evidence to support this theory in The Last Jedi. When we see the flashback of Luke standing over a sleeping Ben Solo, he ignites the green lightsaber before Ben collapses the roof on top of them. Yet later, when Luke Skywalker appears as a Force projection of his younger self to duel Kylo Ren, he does so with Anakin’s blue lightsaber instead. Director Rian Johnson confirmed this was a deliberate choice made to further enrage Ben Solo, but the Star Wars Analyst thinks it goes deeper than that.

Kylo Ren might have accidentally cracked the crystal in Luke’s lightsaber during that brief confrontation, claimed it for his own, and left Luke for dead in the rubble. By the time Luke emerged, Ben had already killed all of the Jedi in training or recruited them as Knights of Ren and burned the temple.

By looking at the hilt of Ben’s original blue saber and comparing it to the red one, it’s clear that the components are the same. Sure, Ben may have bled his original saber, but his hubris is too prominent for him to take such a simple path towards the Dark side. He’s showy, proud, and arrogant. Using Luke’s crystal would be a power move befitting the image Kylo Ren has of himself.

The one piece of evidence that doesn’t support this theory, however, is that in The Last Jedi novelization, the Caretakers on Ahch-To “take his weapon, his star compass, and his strange other gear to the repository.” We’re meant to believe that Luke still had his green lightsaber on Ahch-To, but the lack of specificity here is just open-ended enough that this weapon could be almost anything.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will be released December 20, 2018.