Did Princess Leia Have a Lightsaber? The Story Behind Her Blue Blade
Yes — Princess Leia had her own lightsaber, and it was blue. The Rise of Skywalker confirmed it in 2019 with a flashback showing Leia training as a Jedi under her brother Luke, wielding a blade she built herself. She didn't finish that training, and the saber's story is really the story of why she walked away from the Jedi path. Here's the full picture: where the saber came from, why Leia set it down, where it ended up, and the purple version that almost was.
When Did Leia Get a Lightsaber?
Right after the Battle of Endor. With the Emperor dead and the second Death Star destroyed, Luke Skywalker began training his sister on the jungle moon of Ajan Kloss. Leia was strong in the Force — she always had been; she's a Skywalker, Anakin's daughter and Luke's twin — and she built her own lightsaber as part of that training.
This isn't a fan theory or a deleted scene. It's on screen in The Rise of Skywalker, shown in a flashback where Luke hands the completed saber to Leia during a training duel. For most of the saga Leia was the diplomat and the general, never the Jedi. That flashback rewrote the assumption. She could have been one. She chose not to be.
Why Did Leia Stop Her Jedi Training?
Because she saw where it led. During her training, Leia had a vision: if she continued down the Jedi path to its end, it would be tied to the death of her son. That son was Ben Solo — the boy who would become Kylo Ren.
So she stopped. She set the lightsaber aside and returned to the fight she understood, leading the Resistance as a general rather than a Jedi Knight. It's one of the quietest, heaviest choices in the whole saga: a mother trading her own power for the hope of her child's life. The lightsaber became a symbol of the path not taken.
She didn't destroy it, though. She kept it, and eventually passed it to Luke for safekeeping.
Where Did Leia's Lightsaber End Up?
It traveled further than she did. Leia entrusted the saber to Luke, who took it with him into exile on Ahch-To. After Luke became one with the Force, his spirit gave the saber — along with Anakin's old blade — to Rey.
In the final battle on Exegol, Rey wielded both blue lightsabers against Emperor Palpatine: Anakin's saber in one hand and Leia's in the other, crossed together to turn the Emperor's own Force lightning back on him. So Leia's blade, the one she built and set aside, was there at the very end — in the hands of the Jedi who finished what the Skywalkers started. For a saber its owner never fully used, it had quite an ending.
What Did Leia's Lightsaber Look Like?
Elegant, and unmistakably not a soldier's weapon. The hilt carried silver and gold tones with mother-of-pearl inlays — a nod to Leia's upbringing as a princess of Alderaan rather than a trooper or a smuggler. The emitter was ringed, echoing the design language of Luke's own green saber, and the whole piece had a refined, jewelry-like quality that set it apart from the industrial hilts most characters carry.
The blade was blue — the classic Jedi color, and the color shown in the finished film and in official reference books like Star Wars: The Lightsaber Collection. Blue for a Skywalker feels right; it's the color of Anakin's and Luke's blades, the family line made visible.
The Purple Lightsaber That Almost Was
Here's the twist most people don't know. Leia's blade came very close to being purple.
Carrie Fisher, who played Leia across four decades, said in her memoir that if Leia ever had a lightsaber, she wanted it to be purple. And Lucasfilm listened, at least for a while: early concept art for The Rise of Skywalker by artist Adam Brockbank shows Leia dueling Luke with a purple blade during that training scene. Purple — the rare color carried by Mace Windu, the shade that sits between Jedi blue and Sith red — would have suited Leia's in-between nature perfectly: not quite a general, not quite a Jedi.
The final film went blue instead. But the purple version lives on in the concept art and in Fisher's own words, which is why a lot of fans build their Leia sabers in purple as a tribute. If you own a color-changing saber, you can run either — the canon blue, or the purple that Carrie Fisher wanted.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: Is Leia's lightsaber canon?
A: Yes. It appears in The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and in official reference books. Leia built it during Jedi training with Luke after the Battle of Endor. It's fully established canon, not fan speculation.
Q2: What color was Leia's lightsaber?
A: Blue in the finished film. There was a serious plan for it to be purple — Carrie Fisher wanted purple and concept art showed a purple blade — but the movie went with blue, the traditional Skywalker-family color.
Q3: Who has Leia's lightsaber now?
A: Rey. Leia gave it to Luke, who kept it in exile. Luke's Force spirit passed it to Rey, who used it alongside Anakin's blade to defeat Palpatine on Exegol.
Q4: Why didn't Leia become a Jedi?
A: She had a vision that completing her Jedi training was linked to the death of her son, Ben Solo. She chose to stop training and lead the Resistance as a general instead, setting the lightsaber aside.
Q5: Was Leia strong in the Force?
A: Yes. As Anakin Skywalker's daughter and Luke's twin, Leia was naturally Force-sensitive. She showed it throughout the saga — sensing Luke's danger, later using the Force to survive in space — and her training under Luke confirmed she had real potential as a Jedi.
Internal Links
- Princess Leia Lightsaber — the golden-hilt saber in Leia's style
- Rey Lightsaber — where Leia's blade ended up in canon
- Luke Lightsaber — Leia's brother and training master's saber
- ISABERS Neopixel Lightsaber — run any blade color, blue or purple
- Anakin Lightsaber — the other blue blade Rey wielded at Exegol
