🥉 ESSAY CONTEST FINALIST
“This weapon is your life.” Don’t I know it?
I started thinking about it more after seeing a poll about the most iconic lightsaber of the original trilogy.
My vote in the poll was for Anakin’s lightsaber, but the explanation I came up with didn’t stick to the original trilogy alone, so it fit better to its own post. Here’s the full breakdown of how Anakin’s lightsaber (as well as a few others) serves as a consistent guiding symbol throughout and beyond the Skywalker Saga.
From the moment we first see Anakin’s saber in A New Hope, it’s a symbol of Luke’s motivation to become a Jedi: the idealistic image of Anakin. He holds onto it throughout his early Jedi journey, like a child holding his father’s hand.
The saber is nearly lost in the second issue of Jason Aaron’s Star Wars comic series, in Luke’s first duel with Darth Vader. The very encounter with Vader challenges Luke’s possession of his idea of Anakin, because Vader nearly takes his lightsaber.
Luke carries on, however, and even speaks to the saber while training in The Weapon of a Jedi, swearing to honor Anakin with it.
Things change in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke loses the lightsaber for good. At almost the same time, he learns that Darth Vader is his father. The reveal causes Luke to lose the image of Anakin he believed in, so of course he loses his lightsaber with it.
Charles Soule’s Star Wars comics couple Vader’s reveal and the loss of Anakin’s lightsaber too, through intense and traumatic flashbacks mostly including “I am your father.”
The first arc of the series ends with Luke’s search for a new lightsaber—a new guiding purpose to become a Jedi. He seeks out Verla, a failed Jedi student who explains to him the history of the Jedi and Order 66. With her help, Luke then travels to a Jedi temple on Tempes, where he arrives in the sixth issue.
Luke finds a yellow lightsaber and fights a vision of the Grand Inquisitor to fully claim it. This was a scene that prompted a lot of speculation, and my personal theory is that the lightsaber belonged to the Grand Inquisitor himself. It’s again a symbol of a fallen Jedi’s prime life.
The fact that Luke takes the lightsaber anyway is already a step towards his eventual acceptance of the good in Anakin. He takes up the lightsaber of a fallen Jedi and chooses to reject any evil path it may be connected with.
If or how Luke loses this lightsaber is still up in the air, but the lightsaber he trades it for is yet another step forward in his progress.
The green saber is a symbol of Luke moving on from his dependence on the Jedi’s legacy. Without his image of Anakin or guidance of any other Jedi past, Luke constructs his own pure motivation to become a Jedi. Since he built it with some instructions left behind by Obi-Wan, it makes sense for it to resemble his lightsaber.
Luke sticks with the green saber for the longest time. He only throws it down in front of Palpatine, when he sees that the image of Anakin that his first lightsaber inspired was true. What saves Luke from Palpatine isn’t his lightsaber, nor a symbol of Anakin, but Anakin himself.
That’s in the original trilogy era alone. The prequels also use the saber as a symbol. Note that Anakin only wields it in the Clone Wars, when he’s closest to Luke’s image of him.
Anakin even goes so far as to prove that his image is infectious by modifying Ahsoka Tano’s lightsabers to match the color of his own. Dave Filoni spoke about how this symbolizes Anakin's attachments, but also Ahsoka’s belief in him.
Obi-Wan believes in Anakin too in Revenge of the Sith, which is why he’s the one to take it away when he defeats Anakin on Mustafar, thereby separating the symbol of Anakin as a Jedi from his current status as a Sith.
Darth Vader’s journey to obtain a new lightsaber in Dark Lord of the Sith is a reversal of Luke’s acquisition of Anakin’s lightsaber. Instead of being gifted a new lightsaber, Vader has to steal another and twist it to fit his image. The bleeding process is like his own descent into darkness projected onto the crystal.
It’s fitting that Anakin’s lightsaber remains untouched by Vader for all this time, even though Anakin’s actual legacy in the sequel trilogy era was tainted by Vader, as seen in Bloodline. Anakin’s lightsaber finally calls to Rey, almost in defiance of the people who might try to twist his image, like Kylo Ren. Kylo’s idea of Anakin doesn’t fit what the saber actually represents, but Rey’s does, so when they finally fight, the lightsaber flies into her hand and helps bring about her victory.
Rey returns the saber to Luke in exile, but he doesn’t want it. His last experience with it wasn’t great, and he believes that what it represents about Anakin isn’t the truth anymore. He’s also set aside his green lightsaber and his personal aspirations as a Jedi with it.
Rey knows of Anakin’s fate and takes the saber with her anyway to face Kylo Ren and Snoke. For the first time, Kylo gets to use Anakin’s lightsaber, killing Snoke with it. It’s fitting that Kylo’s chance to use the saber is coupled with an action Anakin would take. However, his motivations are still twisted, so he doesn’t keep the saber for long. He unknowingly destroys it by refusing its meaning.
At the same time, Luke realizes what he failed to see before, that what Anakin’s saber represents never changed. It’s still about an ideal Jedi path, so he projects it with his own image on Crait. It’s not only a hint to viewers of the projection, but it’s representative of Luke accepting the saber from Rey.
Rey goes on to rebuild Anakin’s lightsaber, and she eventually hands it to Ben Solo, who threw his corrupted lightsaber away and finally followed the footsteps of Anakin’s true fate. As a fitting sendoff, the lightsaber ends up being the weapon to finally destroy Palpatine.
Rey then visits Tatooine to bury the Skywalker lightsabers. In the place of them she builds a new lightsaber for her own Jedi path. When turned on, it flashes blue and green before turning yellow. That’s a nice nod to Luke and Leia’s Jedi paths, and a follow-up to the unused line “we’ll always be with you.”
To finish it all off, Rey buries the last symbol of Anakin next to the resting place of his mother. That’s the best part to me. Hopefully you’ve found as much meaning in all this as I have.
