Skip to main content

star wars - What are all the known lightsaber designs?


What are the different designs of lightsabers in the Star Wars canon? For example, Darth Maul with his double-bladed saber, and Kylo Ren with his cross-guard saber.



Answer



Canon




  • Vanilla lightsabers:



    enter image description here




  • Double-bladed lightsaber (see: Darth Maul, Pong Krell, Savage Oppress)


    enter image description here




    • While I hesitate to call this a completely different style, Master Krell's lightsabers are unique in at least one way: they fold up


      enter image description here


      This is no longer quite as unique as I thought; in the Star Wars: Rebels episode "Shroud of Darkness", Kanan duels with a Force Vision of a Jedi Temple Guard, who uses a folding saber.







  • Curved-hilt lightsabers, like Dooku's:


    enter image description here




  • Asajj Ventress' lightsaber(s)


    enter image description here



    Ventress wielded two curved-hilt lightsabers. In The Clone Wars animated film, she was able to combine them into a single, S-shaped double-bladed lightsaber:


    enter image description here


    However, Obi-Wan Kenobi possibly destroys the mechanism that allows this during his fight with Ventress in the film; he cuts her (connected) lightsaber in half, and we never see her use the technique in The Clone Wars show.




  • Lightsaber pike, used by the Jedi Temple Guards1:


    enter image description here


    We have a close encounter with a Temple Guard in "Shroud of Darkness", a Star Wars: Rebels episode, where Kanan has a duel with (a Force ghost of) one using a folding lightsaber. It's not apparent whether this is a standard Guard's saber or not, but there is the reasonable possibility that these sabers do fold.





  • Crossguard lightsaber, most famously used by Kylo Ren:


    enter image description here


    But also in use by ancient Jedi; Ezra Bridger finds a crossguard saber on the Sith world of Malachor, a relic of an ancient battle:


    enter image description here




  • Shoto (a shorter hilt, used by smaller Jedi like Yoda and Even Piell)


    enter image description here


    Shotos are also used by the rare dual-wielding Jedi as an off-hand lightsaber; in the below image from The Clone Wars, you can clearly see that one saber is dramatically shorter than the other:


    enter image description here



    I regret that I do not know what episode this image is from; I welcome input from anyone who does.




  • Sabercane (Cane/lightsaber combo), used by Master Tera Sinube:


    enter image description here




  • Lightsaber/blaster combo (invented by Ezra Bridger, apparently)


    enter image description here





  • Darksaber


    enter image description here




  • Inquisitor's lightsaber:


    enter image description here


    Not merely a double-bladed lightsaber with a funky grip, the saber style used by the Imperial Inquisitors spins around that central ring. The image above is of the Grand Inquisitor, from season 1 of Rebels, but we've seen the other inquisitors in season 2 using sabers of the same style





  • Debated whether or not to include this, but Kanan Jarrus' lightsaber exhibited a property we've never seen before:


    enter image description here


    It comes apart into two pieces. There a bunch of things we don't know about this lightsaber, including whether the pieces function without being connected, or if this is something all lightsabers can do but we've never seen before, but it's an otherwise unique property




Legends


Most of the above, plus:




  • Guard shoto (or Lightsaber tonfa)



    enter image description here




  • Long-handled lightsaber:


    enter image description here




  • One-bladed variant on the lightsaber pike:


    enter image description here





  • Whatever you call this thing:


    enter image description here


    Thunderforge, in comments, suggests three-bladed lightsaber because there of the third blade in the middle of the handle. Wookieepedia calls it the "War Dragon rider lightsaber", because its only appearance in any material is a "design an alien" contest in Star Wars Galaxy Magazine. The War Dragon Rider actually won the contest, no doubt because it looks like something a Space-metalhead would have airbrushed on the side of his spacevan.




  • Lightwhip


    enter image description here





  • Forked lightsaber


    enter image description here




  • I believe Ventress' lightsabers were also slightly more interesting in Legends; in addition to the weirdness stated above, I believe she could tie them together with cord and whirl them around like nunchaku; I can't recall seeing this in canon, but I'm happy to be corrected.




  • Protosaber/Retrosaber


    enter image description here


    The earliest true lightsabers are now typically called retrosabers; their distinguishing feature was an external powerpack, typically worn on the belt and connected to the hilt by a cord.



    After the Jedi went wireless, protosaber look-alikes were called "retrosabers," which also used the external power source, and continued to be used by Jedi hispters the galaxy over (the above image is from an RPG sourcebook set during the Clone Wars)




  • Forcesaber


    enter image description here


    The earliest iteration of the lightsaber was called the Forcesaber; it was used by the Force Hounds, Force-sensitive hunters used by the Rakatan Infinite Empire to find worlds with lots of Force-sensitive inhabitants (which the Rakatans would then invade and enslave). The main difference between the Forcesaber and a lightsaber is one of engineering: rather than requiring a battery, the Forcesaber is activated by channelling Dark Side energy through the hilt.





1 My first instinct was to classify these as double-bladed lightsabers, but they have their own entry in the Databank, so ho-hum



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more