Star Wars reveals that lightsabers could be easily sabotaged in the galaxy far, far away. As seen in the canonical comics published by Marvel, Luke Skywalker meets with a kyber crystal expert in between Empire Strike Back and Return of the Jedi, putting the young Jedi on the path to building his very own green-bladed lightsaber as seen in the final original trilogy film. However, Luke also learned how temperamental lightsabers can be if handled incorrectly.
After losing both his hand and his father’s lightsaber in Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker eventually finds a yellow-bladed lightsaber that once belonged to a Jedi Temple guard. However, it began malfunctioning after Luke’s lightsaber suffered some damage. Although the inexperienced Jedi tried to repair it himself, it was only with the assistance of Doctor Cuata that Luke Skywalker gained key insights about lightsaber construction (and just how close he was to blowing himself up in the Star Wars timeline).
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It’s Easy To Sabotage A Lightsaber… If You Know How
One Simple Change Can Turn Lightsabers Into Secret Bombs
According to Doctor Cuata, a kyber specialist who worked on the Death Star project with Galen Erso, the quasi-eccentric Pantoran reveals that Luke’s tampering with his temporary lightsaber could have caused some real damage. Apparently, it’s quite easy to invert a lightsaber’s emitter matrix by mistake. This one slip could end up turning a lightsaber from an elegant blade symbolizing peace and protection to a secret and incredibly destructive bomb in the hands of the unaware.
In Luke’s defense, the young Jedi was never trained in the finer points of lightsaber construction. After all, most of his training in between films was self-taught thanks to Jedi texts and a holocron he’d managed to recover. This is why Doctor Cuata is such an invaluable presence during Luke’s ongoing journey to becoming a Jedi, offering critical guidance and even the green kyber crystal Skywalker will eventually use to build his new lightsaber ahead of Return of the Jedi.
This Would Surely Be A Trick The Sith Would Love
The Sith Only Wielded Lightsabers To Mock The Jedi
That being said, one can imagine that the aforementioned inversion mistake would be a lightsaber trick the Dark Lords of the Sith would greatly enjoy, particularly Emperor Palpatine. After all, Palpatine was of the mind that the Sith had grown beyond the need for lightsabers, the only reason they continued wielding them coming from a desire to mock the Jedi with the kyber they’d corrupted and bled, often coming from the lightsabers of Jedi they’d slain in battle.
Seeing as how Palpatine had agents embedded within the Jedi Temple itself before Order 66, one can imagine that it would have been easy to have the emitter matrices of multiple Jedi lightsabers inverted, turning them into secret bombs to blow up and presumably kill their wielders once activated on the front lines of the Clone Wars. While it would have likely resulted in Palpatine’s plans being compromised, the hypothetical use of this dark trick in the Star Wars canon is still intriguing all the same.
