What Does a Yellow Lightsaber Mean?
What Does a Yellow Lightsaber Mean? It was mentioned in The Ultimate Saber Guide that yellow colored lightsabers represent Life. Yellow is an energizing color. It is associated with warmth and happiness. People with warm personalities and sunny dispositions tend to favor yellow lightsabers. Yellow is also associated with the sun, sunlight, fire, and gold. It is considered the most positive color available. In this article we’ll take a deeper dive into the yellow lightsaber and its place in the Star Wars universe.
Yellow lightsabers and the Sentinels
Yellow lightsabers have been most commonly associated and seen with a group of Jedi known as the Sentinels. More specifically they are seen with a specialized group within the Sentinels called the Guardians. The Guardians devoted themselves to protecting the Jedi Temples and other facilities. This included keeping watch over the Jedi Masters who resided there. Their training was rigorous and intense, and their studies were focused on lightsaber skills and combat techniques. They were not allowed to leave the temple grounds unless under specific and special circumstances.
Guardians are typically seen with yellow lightsabers; some standard, however many used double-bladed sabers or pike-like sabers with a long staff and short blade.
Yellow Lightsaber Lore and History
Why the Yellow Lightsaber Is So Uncommon
Yellow lightsabers are actually not as rare as they seem. They are primarily used by Jedi Sentinels and Guardians who are scarcely seen by the public. Guardians almost never leave the temple, and Sentinels are usually deployed on non-combat missions which rarely require the use of lightsaber. Additionally, the purge wiped out nearly all Jedi Sentinels when the Anakin Skywalker, who had recently fallen to the dark side, stormed the Temple with his clone troopers during Order 66.
Are the Jedi Temple Guards required to use yellow lightsabers?
Unlike other Jedi who must construct their own lightsabers Jedi Temple Guards do not choose their lightsabers, they are assigned to them. They are given yellow sabers for the same reason they where masks – to preserve anonymity. Temple Guards were once Jedi Knights who fully committed themselves to the Order.
Anonymity helps them achieve total emotional detachment, which is required of each Guardian. Having their yellow lightsabers issued to them helps maintain the militaristic nature of the Guardians.
What Does a Yellow Lightsaber Mean?
The yellow lightsaber is neither good nor bad. The color is more a reflection of its job function, not the person using it. The yellow pike sabers carried by Jedi Guardians are the property of the Temple not the Jedi themselves, making them more or less neutral. It can be compared to a police officer’s standard issued side arm, or a soldier’s rifle. There’s nothing unique about them as they are more utilitarian than symbolic.
Ashoka Tano, former Jedi, dual wielded a short, yellow saber along with a green one during the Clone Wars while she was still a member of the Jedi Order under Anakin Skywalker. After leaving the Jedi Order, she switched to white sabers, emblematic of her purification from the strict dogma and sometimes hypocritical teachings of the Jedi Order.
Asajj Ventress, known for dual wielding red lightsabers, left the Sith after a major betrayal from her former master, Count Dooku, and becoming a bounty hunter. She purchased a yellow lightsaber on the black market. Where it came from or who its previous owner was remains a mystery.
Where did Rey get the yellow lightsaber?
There is no official explanation of where Rey’s yellow lightsaber came from at the end of the Rise of Skywalker – just fan theories. Did she find it on the Sith planet? Did she buy it on the black market much like Asajj Ventress? Did she construct it herself? And if she constructed it, where did she get the Kyber crystal? These questions may never be canonically answered.
One question that we may be able to answer is why yellow? The color of a lightsaber has always represented the wielder’s alignment with the Force, or a reflection of predominate character traits. Yellow is associated with life. Rey showed an ability to use the Force to heal throughout the final film. As mentioned in this article, yellow was the color of Jedi Temple Guardians’ lightsabers, and represented a balance between the two traditional Jedi disciplines. Just before we get to see Rey’s yellow saber in the film she sees Luke and Leia. Both acted as her mentors, one a reclusive Jedi Master, the other a determined military leader. Rey may represent the balance between the two.