The Reason Why Luke's Lightsaber Changed From Blue To Green In 'Return Of The Jedi'
In A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, lightsabers were presented as either blue or red. Obi-Wan Kenobi's lightsaber had a blue blade, which became associated with the Jedi, as did the one that he gave to Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader, however, had a red lightsaber, which then became forever associated with the Sith. This all changed in Return of the Jedi when Luke Skywalker had built himself a new lightsaber. His new lightsaber broke away from the established color standard that everyone had come to expect as this one was green. However, all of the original posters and promotional material for Return of the Jedi had Luke Skywalker using the traditional blue-bladed lightsaber. Luke Skywalker's blue lightsaber even made it into the trailers. Based on this you can imagine the audience’s surprise when the actual film had Luke Skywalker using a green-bladed lightsaber rather than a blue one.
So why did we get this change in lightsaber color? Star Wars storytelling has covered this from an in-universe perspective in various layers of multimedia projects, but that was after the fact. It opened up a whole new world of discussion around the color of lightsabers. The actual reason that Luke Skywalker ended up with a green-bladed lightsaber rather than the expected blue had nothing to do with storytelling and everything to do with real-life practicality.
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Luke Skywalker's lightsaber was changed from blue to green when they were filming because it was difficult to see. This became apparent during act one of Return of the Jedi when the battle on Jabba the Hutt's sail barge was shot during the day. The blue lightsaber blended in with the clear blue sky. A bit of thinking on set resulted in the decision being made to change the color of Luke Skywalker's new lightsaber from blue to green. From that moment on, fans of Star Wars lightsabers suddenly had their world opened up from a blue and red pairing to the potential to have other colors beyond blue, red, and green.
Although it never actually made it into the released version of the Return of the Jedi movie there is actually a deleted scene that shows Luke Skywalker constructing his new lightsaber with the green blade. This scene was added to the bonus content disc in the Blu-ray set that was released as “Luke's Lightsaber.” It makes total sense that this scene was removed as it would have revealed too much and taken away a lot of the surprise from events that were to come later in the movie.
With the introduction of a new Jedi lightsaber color in Return of the Jedi, the Star Wars franchise would have the ability to have more scope for their use within future projects. We have seen this now in the prequel trilogy with blue, green, and purple lightsabers being wielded by the Jedi and red continuing for the Sith. We have also seen yellow lightsabers used by the Jedi Temple guard in The Clone Wars animated series. Of course, the lightsaber that Rey Skywalker built at the end of The Rise of Skywalker was also yellow. Other notable individual entries are a black lightsaber in the case of the Darksaber, a white lightsaber for Ahsoka Tano, and an orange lightsaber in the video game Jedi: Fallen Order.
So there we have it. One simple change of color of Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber from blue to green for practical reasons has led us to an exciting world of lightsaber colors.
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Source(s): Screen Rant