Star Wars will debut a new lightsaber color when its next series hits Disney+ this week. Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedicontinues the story of Lah Kara, the young Jedi-in-training who first appeared in the 2021 Star Wars: Visions short The Ninth Jedi and returned in The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope. The eight-episode anime from Production I.G follows Kara as she trains under Margrave Juro and races to rescue her father, Lah Zhima, the only known sabersmith left in the galaxy.
The reveal came in the final trailer for The Ninth Jedi, which Lucasfilm released on Monday and capped with the franchise’s first silver lightsaber. Zhima wields the silver blade in the trailer’s opening moments, and Kara ignites the same color late in the footage during her heated duel with the masked hunter Nawaam. He blurts out “Silver Saber” as her weapon springs to life, and she answers, “just like my father’s.” No official Lucasfilm project had ever featured a silver lightsaber before.
Silver does have a history in the galaxy far, far away, just not in canon. The old Star Wars Legends continuity gave the Corellian Jedi Corran Horn a silver blade powered by a Durindfire crystal, a rare gem mined on Tatooine, and his grandfather Nejaa Halcyon carried one before him. Players could even craft silver blades in the 2004 video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II – The Sith Lords. Lucasfilm moved that entire body of storytelling out of canon in 2014, and the color stayed on the page ever since.
The silver blade also follows the unusual rules of this corner of Star Wars. Lightsabers in The Ninth Jedi have no fixed color, and every weapon Zhima forges changes shades to match the person wielding it. Supervising Director Kenji Kamiyama traced the concept back to his first viewing of the original trilogy, when he wrongly assumed the blades changed color on their own, and he chose to keep that idea alive in his non-canon vision of the galaxy. A line of dialogue in the show’s first trailer summed up the rule, confirming that each blade “reflects the user’s heart:”
That mechanic was very prominent in the earlier footage. Kara’s blade flashed red in a burst of anger at one point in the first trailer, and Nawaam stunned her by igniting a blue saber of his own, a hint that the man hunting the Jedi may once have counted himself among them. More details about this will be revealed when the series premieres on Disney+ on August 5.
Every Prominent Lightsaber Color in Star Wars Canon
Canon plays by stricter rules than The Ninth Jedi. A kyber crystal bonds with the Force user who claims it, takes on a single color, and maintains that color unless something drastic corrupts or heals the stone. Seven blade colors have defined the saga’s heroes and villains across the movies and shows.
Blue is the color most fans picture first, and it has the deepest roots in the saga. Obi-Wan Kenobi carried a blue blade through all three prequels and into Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, while Anakin Skywalker’s blue saber grew into the most storied weapon in the franchise. Luke Skywalker inherited it, lost it along with his hand on Cloud City, and Rey carried the restored weapon through the sequel trilogy before burying it on Tatooine.
Leia Organa trained with a blue blade of her own, revealed in a flashback in The Rise of Skywalker, and Kanan Jarrus kept the color alive in Star Wars Rebels while hiding from the Empire. Ezra Bridger might also use one in Ahsoka Season 2.
Green
Luke introduced the green blade to moviegoers in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. The self-made weapon marked his growth from student to Jedi Knight, since the blue saber he lost on Cloud City belonged to his father. Yoda and Qui-Gon Jinn then turned green into the signature of the Order’s great teachers throughout the prequels.
Ahsoka Tano began her journey with green as well. Anakin’s Padawan wielded a full-length green saber alongside a shorter yellow-green shoto for most of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, before Anakin returned the weapons to her with blue blades in the show’s final season.
Red belongs to the dark side. Canon explains the color through a process called bleeding, in which a dark sider pours pain and hatred into a stolen kyber crystal until it burns crimson. Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and Count Dooku all carried red blades in the films; Darth Maul swung a double-bladed version in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, and Kylo Ren channeled his through a crackling crossguard hilt because his cracked crystal could barely contain the power.
The Inquisitors expanded red’s popularity on television. The Jedi hunters of Rebels and Obi-Wan Kenobi carried spinning double-bladed sabers while tracking down survivors of Order 66.
Yellow
Yellow is one of the rarest colors among the Order’s ranks on screen. The Jedi Temple Guards wielded yellow double-bladed pikes in The Clone Wars and Rebels, and those anonymous sentinels dedicated their lives to protecting the Jedi’s home on Coruscant.
Rey gave the color its first live-action moment in the closing scene of The Rise of Skywalker. After burying the Skywalker sabers at the Lars homestead, she ignited a golden blade she assembled from parts of her old scavenger staff.
Purple
Purple exists in the movies because Samuel L. Jackson asked for it. The actor wanted a blade he could spot in the crowded arena battle on Geonosis, so George Lucas gave Mace Windu the amethyst color for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones. Windu kept it through Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and The Clone Wars, and no other major on-screen Jedi shares the color.
Darksaber
The Darksaber is the only blade of its kind. Tarre Vizsla, the first Mandalorian ever accepted into the Jedi Order, forged the flat black weapon roughly a thousand years before the Skywalker saga, and it became the ultimate symbol of Mandalorian leadership, one that tradition demanded be won in combat.
Pre Vizsla introduced the weapon in The Clone Wars before losing it, and his life, to Maul. Sabine Wren recovered it in Rebels, Bo-Katan Kryze accepted it from her, and Moff Gideon held it until Din Djarin defeated him in The Mandalorian Season 2. Gideon got the last word anyway, crushing the ancient blade during the Season 3 finale.
White
Ahsoka Tano carries the only white blades in on-screen canon. The 2016 novel Ahsoka by E.K. Johnston revealed their origin, showing the former Jedi defeat the Inquisitor known as the Sixth Brother, claim the red kyber crystals from his weapon, and heal their corruption through the Force until the stones turned pure white.
The twin sabers made their on-screen debut in Rebels and followed her into The Mandalorian and her own live-action series, Ahsoka. Kara’s silver saber will stand as their closest relative when The Ninth Jedi debuts this week.
