Star Wars: Rey’s New [SPOILER] In Rise of Skywalker Explained

Caution: Spoilers ahead for The Rise of Skywalker

The closing moments of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker reveal Rey has a brand new yellow lightsaber, but what does this mean for the hero of the sequel trilogy? Rey’s Star Wars journey appears to come to an end in The Rise of Skywalker. The Jedi-in-training discovers her true heritage as a Palpatine, showcases considerable new Force powers and finally puts an end to the Emperor, the First Order and the dawn of a new Imperial age. While she dies to complete this mission, Rey is allowed to live another day thanks to the efforts of a redeemed Kylo Ren.

In The Rise of Skywalker‘s final scene, Rey travels back to Tatooine, where the entire story first began. She looks over the Lars farm upon which Luke spent his formative years and then buries both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers in the sand near the hut where Luke first dreamed of space adventures and epic battles in 1977. Before the audience can begin to absorb the significance of this moment, however, Rey whips out a brand new weapon – a yellow-colored lightsaber.

Aside from giving Disney one last toy to produce, the reveal of Rey’s new lightsaber has a wider significance on both the character’s overall arc and the completion of the Skywalker saga as a whole, as well as pointing a way forward for the future of the Jedi in the Star Wars universe. Here’s where Rey’s new lightsaber comes from and what it reveals as one of the Skywalker saga’s final shots.

Rey’s New Lightsaber Is Made From Her Staff

When Rey is first introduced in The Force Awakens, she wields a staff made from the wreckage littered around the desert of Jakku. This weapon is befitting of Rey during her scavenging days; a primitive item that is practical for both clambering around crashed spacecraft and taking out lowlifes looking to steal her earnings. Even when Rey begins learning the ways of the Force and inherits Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, she keeps hold of her trusty staff, similar to how Luke Skywalker would still use a blaster before becoming a true Jedi Master. Rey’s reliance on her staff is highlighted in The Rise Of Skywalker‘s training sequence, in which she is unable to hit a combat remote with her lightsaber, but nails the machine with her quarterstaff. The intention here is to show that Rey is not a full Jedi when The Rise of Skywalker begins, and is more comfortable with her old battle companion than with a lightsaber.

When the new yellow lightsaber is unveiled 2 hours or so later, the hilt looks to be constructed from a section of Rey’s old staff. This symbolically indicates that Rey has finally completed her transition from scavenger to Jedi, leaving behind her old life and fully embracing the ways of the Force. Furthermore, Rey’s staff is a relic from her time on Jakku. Not only did Rey despise being trapped on the desert planet with no idea who she was, but the recently-gained knowledge of her true family and the death of her parents adds further despair to the memories of those scavenging days. Transforming the staff into a brand new lightsaber feels like an appropriate way of moving on from that painful past, which is confirmed when Rey drops the “Palpatine” name and adopts the title of Skywalker.

Why Rey Doesn’t Use The Skywalker Saber

It might seem a little strange that Rey decides to create a brand new lightsaber when she has two perfectly good ones in her possession (and given how the beginning of the film sets up Rey as unworthy to Luke’s blue blade) but there is logic and precedent behind her choice. Primarily, it’s well established within Star Wars lore that one of the most important stages in a Jedi’s training is to craft their own lightsaber from scratch, just as Luke ends up doing with his green blade in Return of the Jedi, replacing the original blue weapon given to him by Obi-Wan Kenobi and lost at Cloud City. For Rey to become a true, fully-formed Jedi by the conclusion of the sequel trilogy, it was imperative that fans see her with a lightsaber all of her own making.

There’s also a symbolic relevance to Rey burying the Skywalker sabers. The Rise of Skywalker is billed as the closing chapter of the famous family’s saga in the Star Wars universe, and laying to rest the weapons that belonged to Luke and Leia is a major step towards achieving that goal, since the Skywalker saga couldn’t truly be over if Rey was still carrying the lightsaber synonymous with that name. This resolution is somewhat undermined when Rey opts to call herself a Skywalker, but the visual of the sabers literally being put into the ground still acts as a powerful image to close out Luke, Anakin and Leia’s story. Within the narrative, both the burial and the name change are signs of the respect Rey has for her two Skywalker masters. While it might’ve been easier to carry on using one of the blue weapons, it’s implied that, with the galaxy finally safe, the work of the Skywalker family is now complete, and Rey evidently feels it’s a more fitting tribute to let them rest than to carry that legacy forward.

Why Rey’s New Lightsaber Blade Is Yellow, Not Blue Or Green

The main inspiration behind the unique color of Rey’s lightsaber blade is likely a simply and pragmatic one. The main point of the scene is to highlight how Rey has her own lightsaber, and the easiest way to show this to viewers is to pick a completely distinct color. Had the blade been the traditional blue or green, some viewers might’ve wondered whether the weapon was one seen previously in the franchise. The striking yellow color immediately indicates to the entire theater that this is a brand new weapon. Taking an even more cynical route, the yellow color also opens up a new opportunity for further toy designs, with plenty of green and blue models already in stores.

This is not the first sighting of a yellow lightsaber in the world of Star Wars. Such weapons were carried by the Sentinels in The Clone Wars, and although there’s not a direct correlation between these warriors and Rey, the Sentinels sought to marry the diplomacy of the Consulars with the strength of the Guardians. In a similar manner, the end of The Rise of Skywalker finds Rey as the last person standing on either the Jedi or Sith side of the Force fence. The Force lives in her now, carrying the weight of everyone from Luke Skywalker to Ben Solo. Just as the Sentinels sought balance, Rey’s yellow lightsaber is perhaps also a visual manifestation of how “balance” has finally been brought to the Force after a grand total of 9 movies and 40 years.

It’s also potentially significant that Rey builds a lightsaber that is largely unfamiliar within the Star Wars movie series. For her entire run in the sequel trilogy, Rey has been defined by her upbringing, or lack of it, and a quest to uncover her identity. After bounding from “no one” to a Palpatine to a Skywalker, it’s a fitting end that Rey ultimately chooses a lightsaber design that is worlds away from those that came before in The Rise of Skywalker. With this bold new look, Rey is finally staking her own claim and moving on from the hunt for answers that dominated her old life.