My Mother, who’s a massive fan of the Star Wars movies, but besides those, she’s not sure of the lore that lives beyond those movies.
Just a few days ago, I asked her if she knew what a kyber crystal is. She responded by staring at me like the massive nerd that I am. I proceeded to explain that the crystal is what powers a lightsaber – and she became intrigued.
For those who don’t know. The kyber crystal is what a Jedi will obtain, usually on the planet Ilum to power their lightsaber. It’s also a crystal that a Jedi doesn’t just choose, the crystal chooses them, and they have to go through “trials” in order to prove themselves.
They also don’t choose the colour.
This crystal powers their sabers, and their rank changes from “Youngling” to “Padawan”.
So all in all, it’s a pretty big deal for a soon-to-be Jedi. This is the weapon that they will use for pretty much the rest of their life. Whilst they don’t get a choice in the crystal, they do build their own hilt, switch, emitter, etc.
So, how is a Sith’s lightsaber ALWAYS red? It’s a good question – they make the crystal bleed.
Literally.
They absolutely destroy the crystal with all sorts of negative emotions including pain and anger which in turn makes the crystal bleed, this gives it the kind of crimson red style saber you see Sith use.
When a Sith bleeds the crystal, the crystal gives the Sith a vision. In Vader’s aspect, his vision was effectively him returning back in time with a green saber, killing Palpatine, and returning to Obi-Wan until he broke out of the vision.
It’s interesting right? We know.
We’ve had 11 live-action Star Wars movies and NONE of them have touched on this in any manner which doesn’t make any sense. It’s weird that people just see them as something every Jedi gets which is not the case.
This would have been better to see in The Phantom Menace for example. Instead of the movie ending the way it did, it could have ended with Anakin going through his trials and switching his saber on for the very first time.
Thankfully – other projects have touched on this better. The Clone Wars and Rebels touched on this, especially in Rebels where we see Ezra’s trials. We saw Cal Kestis gain his crystal in the Fallen Order video game.
It’s exactly why this needs to be a pretty big focus on any future project that will touch on a young Jedi. It’s something that even casual fans should be familiar with because it’s actually such a huge part of a Youngling’s journey to becoming a Jedi Knight.
The reason I say it needs to be touched on in LIVE-ACTION is that whenever a Star Wars project is live-action, it’s automatically more popular, even if the side projects such as Rebels and Clone Wars explain the actual lore in a much better light.
