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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)


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    • 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)


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    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)


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    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)


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  • Darksaber


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  • Inquisitor's lightsaber:


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    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:


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  • One-bladed variant on the lightsaber pike:


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  • Whatever you call this thing:


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    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


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  • 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


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    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



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