Luke Skywalker famously wielded the Star Wars franchise's first green-bladed lightsaber in Return of the Jedi , but its color was changed from its original blue hue. Luke Skywalker's Jedi training is complete in Return of the Jedi, needing only to defeat Darth Vader to ascend to Jedi Knighthood. Although Luke won the day with sentiment rather than power or fighting skills, his visually-spectacular green-bladed lightsaber was put to good use throughout the film. One behind-the-scenes change, however, resulted in its at-the-time unique blade color, which was originally planned to be blue.

As revealed in the Legends-era multimedia project, Shadows of the Empire, Luke Skywalker constructed his lightsaber shortly after the events of The Empire Strikes Back, where he lost his first weapon, the lightsaber of Anakin Skywalker. In Ben Kenobi's home, Luke used instructions left for him by his late mentor to construct a nearly identical hilt to Kenobi's. Luke also synthesized a lightsaber crystal using the Force, resulting in a green gem that produced a blade of the same color, unlike the Sith, whose dark side-generated synth crystals produced red blades.

From posters to promotional material and even early trailers, Luke Skywalker's new lightsaber in Return of the Jedi was originally depicted as having a blue blade, but for at-the-time unknown reasons, his weapon became green by the time the film was released. The reason for the change was simple: A blue blade was difficult to see during act 1's daytime battle aboard Jabba the Hutt's sail barge, especially when held against the clear blue sky. Thus, the blade was made green for the entire film, adding a new hue to lightsabers and leading to new Star Wars lore to explain the meanings behind the various lightsaber blade colors.

In 1977, the first Star Wars movie only depicted two lightsaber blade colors: blue and red. Luke and Obi-Wan's weapons had blue blades while Darth Vader's had a red one, implying that the colors represented Jedi and Sith, respectively. Marvel's Star Wars comics, which filled in the gaps between films, stuck to this unspoken rule, with Vader's Sith apprentice, Kharys, using a red-bladed lightsaber. Later issues would introduce Baron Orman Tagge, an Imperial nobleman, who wielded an orange-bladed lightsaber that he'd commissioned. Since Tagge wasn't Force-sensitive, let alone a Sith, his unique blade color conformed to the unspoken rule.

By introducing a new Jedi lightsaber blade color, Return of the Jedi led the franchise to establish that Jedi Knights used a variety of lightsaber colors, with blue and green being the most common, while Sith Lords and affiliated dark side-using groups almost uniformly used red bladed weapons. Legends material included notable exceptions, however, as dark side-users, such as the Prophet of the Dark Side named Sariss, used a blue lightsaber, while Luke Skywalker built a red-bladed shoto (short lightsaber) less than a year after Return of the Jedi.

Mark Hamill's lightsaber prop in Return of the Jedi was, notably, a slightly modified Alec Guinness lightsaber prop from A New Hope. Had Luke's new lightsaber kept its original color, it'd have been a near-exact copy of Ben Kenobi's weapon. By changing his lightsaber color from blue to green, Return of the Jedi unintentionally made Luke Skywalker's lightsaber reflect those of his mentors, with a similar hilt to Kenobi's and a blade that matches Yoda's.

Next: Star Wars: Why Some Jedi Used Red Lightsabers

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David Miller (823 Articles Published)

David Miller is a staff writer for Screen Rant, indie comic writer, and life-long lover of all things Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. He was born and raised in New York and has a degree in English from Rider University. He relates to Peter Parker maybe a little too much.

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