The lightsaber is, as we know, an elegant weapon from a more… civilised age. But how did the lightsaber we see in Star Wars TV series Obi-Wan Kenobi come to be? Prop master Brad Elliot reveals how they incorporated the complex lore of both the sequel and prequel movies in creating the weapon for the Disney Plus series.
In an interview with StarWars.com, Elliot revealed that Kenobi’s lightsaber was the most difficult thing for prop builders to design. Because prop creators in the prequels and original trilogy used similar but not the same designs, it was up to the Obi-Wan Kenobi prop builders to bridge that visual gap and merge the two different designs together while also creating something unique.
Elliot explained: “His lightsaber was the trickiest thing that we had to figure out. The Revenge of the Sith saber is smaller, shinier, and differs in many other details from the New Hope saber that Alec Guinness carried. Kenobi is coming from the loss of the war, the fall of the Jedi Order, and the loss of his best friend and Padawan.”
“He’s carrying the weight of his past, so his saber is largely from that past,” Elliot added.
According to the Star Wars website, “While the design aesthetic mainly mirrors the prequel hilt previously carried by series star Ewan McGregor, prop makers specifically upgraded the emitter to more closely match Guinness’s original and aged the once pristine handle to make it feel like an artifact that had spent nearly ten years buried in the desert.”
All ten episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi, which also includes Hayden Christensen reprising his role as Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, are now available to stream on Disney Plus.