Lightsaber Relics

Given the holiday this week, I kind of didn’t get around to sitting and writing an outline for my Saturday Note; I just had other things on my mind, I guess. I only vaguely considered skipping this week’s entry, but I’m trying to get as many weeks of this done as I can, and I have the time, so there’s not really a reason not to. And luckily I have a list of unused ideas to write Notes about in my planner, so I’m not entirely void of ideas.

Now I wish I had something remotely Thanksgiving-related to give you guys, but, uh… I don’t even know how to handle that.

Presently reading Prisoners of Geography, which is not as much fun as I had hoped when I first spotted it in Barnes & Noble. I am still playing LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, although I am about halfway through Rise of Skywalker–after which comes a butt-ton of Free Play Mode. And then following that, I think I’ll get back into some Assassin’s Creed? Oh, and I finished Leviathan on Netflix.

Anakin’s Lightsaber is Not a Relic

[rubs forehead] I’m sorry, guys, but I’m playing LEGO Star Wars, and I just read the Revenge of the Sith novelization, so we’re on another Star Wars kick. If that sounds boring to you, here’s this somewhat relevant screenshot that’s full of wisdom:

Anyhow, in The Force Awakens, it’s a pretty big moment when our protagonist, Rey, finds Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. And the lightsaber becomes a major object in the rest of the saga. Kylo Ren insists that the lightsaber belongs to him, as it was his grandfather’s, and after Anakin, Luke used it until his duel with Darth Vader in Empire Strikes Back, where it’s lost. The lightsaber is broken in The Last Jedi, and is repaired in time for The Rise of Skywalker, in which Rey uses it throughout, until the conclusion, in which we see that she’s made her own lightsaber. 

How it implausibly arrived in Maz’s castle is never really explained in the movies themselves, but it’s clearly meant to be A Big Deal to us, the viewers. Here’s the thing: the lightsaber was never really meant to be a relic.

Lightsabers are a big deal: they’re what makes Star Wars stand out. It’s not that other stories don’t have laser swords, it’s that the lightsaber–the way they look, sound, and act–makes them stand apart from other science fiction stories, and makes their wielders stand apart from other characters in the setting. And within the setting, there is some importance placed on them; we know that each one is supposed to be built by the Jedi who uses it, and Obi-Wan repeatedly drills into Anakin’s head that he shouldn’t lose his because it’s what he uses to defend himself.

But they’re not, like, holy relics or family heirlooms. At least, they’re not supposed to be.

You’ll notice, for instance, that in Attack of the Clones, both Obi-Wan and Anakin lose their lightsabers, and you know what the other Jedi do when they rescue them? Hand them spares. They have those lying around, apparently. General Grievous keeps lightsabers as trophies of the Jedi he’s killed, but there’s no effort to return those to the Jedi Order, which you’d expect if they were revered as important objects.

Obi-Wan gives Luke his father’s lightsaber–but that feels less like a matter of, “Here’s a family heirloom”, and more, “You need one if you’re going to be a Jedi, this is the one I have”. And of course, it has importance, thematically, of Luke taking up his father’s role as a Jedi, but that doesn’t mean that in-universe it’s a common idea, nor that it’s a particularly important object to Jedi all over. And obviously, lightsabers being family heirlooms isn’t A Thing because most Jedi don’t have families as such–they’re forbidden from marrying due to a ban on attachments.

Which means it makes perfect sense that they’re not going to venerate lightsabers as relics. Yes, each one has a lightsaber that’s important to them, personally, because that’s what they need to use to defend themselves, but they don’t pass them along

[Don’t talk to me about the Darksaber–that’s a special case, with a unique lightsaber, and the Mandalorians are weird anyway.]

But in the Sequel Trilogy, the lightsaber is basically the most important object in the story. Rey is chosen to wield it because she’s the inheritor of Skywalker legacy. When Kylo Ren and Rey fight over it, and Kylo talks about letting the past die in a film about re-evaluating legacy, they break the lightsaber in a moment that might as well scream “SYMBOLISM!” Which… I think works really well for what the movie’s trying to say. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stick, and the lightsaber is duct-taped back together in the sequel.

The lightsaber isn’t important. It shouldn’t be. The reason it becomes an important relic in the Sequel Trilogy isn’t because there’s an in-universe reason for it (it shouldn’t even be there). It’s because it’s important to the fans–it’s another bit of meta commentary that makes little sense in-universe, but makes a lot of sense if you’re including something that fans care about. It provides a bit of continuity.

It also makes it very frustrating, because, as The Last Jedi points out, clinging to the past like this means that the characters and their conflicts aren’t growing or changing. They’re just rehashing the same things over and over again. Rey should have worked to build her own lightsaber after the one she used was seemingly destroyed; instead, because they knew fans loved it, it was taped together so that it could appear in the sequel.

When Anakin and Luke lose their lightsabers, they build new ones. When Rey loses it, it has to be fixed, until it’s buried to signal that the Saga is over (until Disney makes a new film). It wasn’t ever meant to be an important relic that everyone had to hang onto.

Move on; in-universe, it was only meant to be an object. It didn’t need to be anything more than the weapon it was.

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