Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker VFX supervisor answers a big question about Episode 9's ending

(Image credit: Lucasfilm)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker left fans of the franchise with a great many questions – questions we've tried hard to answer. One of those included why Rey was seen holding a yellow lightsaber at the very end of the movie. Thanks to the movie's visual effects supervisor, we now have an answer. 

"A fair number of colours have been used in lightsabers. So there was a design challenge there in terms of what colour it should be," Roger Guyett told Insider when asked about what direction they were given. Confirming that the blade is indeed yellow, and not gold, Guyett added: "There was an optimistic kind of quality to that, but we also wanted [Rey] to have a very unique colour. We ran some tests and decided in the end what colour it would be."

Guyett, and the rest of the VFX team interviewed, all used the word "optimism" when talking about the colour. We had speculated that Rey may have used the Kyber crystal – the object that's used to form a lightsaber's blade – from Kylo Ren's blade, along with another Jedi's crystal, in the making of the new blade. This seems to not be the case, as the decision was seemingly mainly for aesthetic purposes. 

However, there was one very purposeful design choice made in relation to Rey's past: the new lightsaber's hilt is built from her original staff.

"That was the concept," said Guyett. "The art production design and the art department, we all contribute to the designs of various things... [director] J.J. [Abrams] just thought it was logical that she had the staff, and, therefore, the sabre should somehow be linked to that." 

Another question recently answered about The Rise of Skywalker concerned how the Emperor returned in Episode 9 after seemingly dying in Return of the Jedi. The official companion book to The Rise of Skywalker implied the Sith Eternal helped save him – read more about the Emperor's return here.

Fancy rewatching the Star Wars movies? Here's how to watch the Star Wars movies in order, and here's the Star Wars timeline in chronological order.

Jack Shepherd
Freelance Journalist

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.

Latest in Sci-Fi Movies
John Boyega in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
John Boyega was tired of "doing a lot of falling" in the Star Wars sequels, so asked director J.J. Abrams for a "level of growth" between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker
Darth Vader in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars fans have ignited an age-old debate, and there are some seriously hot takes
Sam Worthington in Avatar: The Way of Water
James Cameron's early cut of Avatar 3 is "absolutely breathtaking," according to Disney CEO Bob Iger
Pacific Rim
The 35 greatest 2010s sci-fi movies
Godzilla emerging from an exploding volcano.
Win a Blu-ray of Godzilla vs Biollante
The Mandalorian and Grogu
The Mandalorian and Grogu has the lowest budget of any theatrical Star Wars movie since Disney bought Lucasfilm
Latest in News
Pillars of Eternity
10 years later, in a post-Baldur's Gate 3 and Avowed world, Obsidian is giving its own throwback CRPG Pillars of Eternity a turn-based combat mode
Destiny 2 Lightfall
When Destiny 2 "weekly active users dropped lower and faster than we'd seen since 2018," Bungie assembled an A-Team to put out some fires: "We needed to do something"
Velma, Daphne, Fred, Shaggy, and Scooby-Doo looking at a giant key which is also a clue
Netflix is rebooting Scooby-Doo as a live-action series from the producer of Supergirl and The Flash centered around a "supernatural murder" at a summer camp
Astro Bot
Astro Bot went through 23 pitch iterations before its director promised PlayStation "happy gameplay" and "overflowing charm," though it did once end with robot decapitation that made "some people really upset"
Tomb Raider
5 years after Avengers, 2 years after its last layoffs, and who knows how long before Perfect Dark and Tomb Raider return, Crystal Dynamics announces another round of layoffs
AI Limit
"AI is not as effective as it might appear": Dev of AI-focused Soulslike RPG says they didn't use any AI-generated content and it can't match "genuine creativity"