(Later in “real” canon all of these words become interchangeable.) In Legends canon, the reason Sith blades were red is that the crystals were unnatural and synthetic. Before The Clone Wars, the crystals weren’t always called “kyber crystals,” but were often called Ilum crystals, because they came from the planet Ilum.

(Though early Phantom Menace-era Mace Windu action figures had a blue-bladed saber.) In Legends canon, the lightsaber color came from the color of the crystals used to construct it. Jackson’s character Mace Windu became the first onscreen Jedi to have a blade that wasn’t red, blue, or green. Famously, after requesting a purple lightsaber from George Lucas, Samuel L. Basically, a blue lightsaber against a blue sky looked weird and a green one looked better.įrom there, canon allowed for more lightsaber colors. In fact, the color was only changed to green because ILM decided it looked better against the sand dunes and blue sky of Tatooine. Indeed, even early posters and 1982 trailers for Return of the Jedi featured Luke rocking another blue lightsaber, not a green one. But then, Luke lost his blue lightsaber in The Empire Strikes Back and got a green one in Return of the Jedi.īut, this green lightsaber was a last-minute decision. In terms of what was on screen, for the first two films, blue lightsabers were good and red were bad.

Some Obi-Wan Kenobi action figures sported yellow lightsabers, further proving that George Lucas and everybody else involved didn’t quite have their minds made up about what the lightsaber colors were supposed to represent. In fact, throughout the entire Marvel adaptation of Star Wars, a deep red was the default color for everyone’s lightsabers. In April 1977, about a month before Star Wars hit theaters for the first time, Luke Skywalker - as depicted in Marvel comics - had a red lightsaber. Luke’s lightsaber is blue on this promotional poster but was later changed to green in post-production.

Star Wars by Charles Soule