Star Wars Admits Lightsabers Are Useless Against a Central Canon Race

Lightsabers in the Star Wars universe are the ultimate weapon, but a new villain proves they’re more useless than fans thought.

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Wars: Revelations #1!The Jedi and Sith of the Star Wars universe wield one of the most powerful weapons in the galaxy – but even lightsabers can be useless against certain beings and objects. As iconic as Darth Vader’s helmet, lightsabers symbolize the Star Wars mythos in a very succinct way: it is an “elegant weapon from a more civilized age” used against an Empire with projectile weaponry. But in Star Wars: Revelations #1, the franchise reveals lightsabers fail to work on one key race…and fail to stop a key villain from amassing an army.

Introduced in Episode IV: A New Hope in 1977, lightsabers immediately became the symbol of the entire franchise; only Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader were seen using them. The prequels only expanded what lightsabers could do: they could deflect blaster bolts back at foes, cut through nearly any solid objects, and could only be stopped by another lightsaber. While other films such as The Force Awakens revealed they could be blocked by specially-made electric weapons, no other creature was portrayed with a resistance or even an immunity to a lightsaber blade.

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In Star Wars: Revelations #1, written by Marc Guggenheim, the mysterious Eye of Webbish Bog reveals to Darth Vader a vision of a single droid: Ajax Sigma, a being who inspired a revolution among his people. Centuries ago, the Jedi of the High Republic cut down Ajax Sigma’s rebellion and his followers in a pitched conflict – but his core processor was preserved, passed down from person to person, until it arrived in the hands of Han Solo. They buried it deep, but it was recovered by cultists who eventually installed the core into a new, more powerful droid body. Why were the Jedi unable to kill a simple droid? The answer lies in the fact that a droid’s miraculous survival against a lightsaber-wielding foe has happened before.

Ajax Sigma Is A Star Was Revolution

In Star Wars: Darth Vader #1, Darth Vader engages the droid ZED-6-7 in battle, but fails to permanently destroy it – and the same exact situation happens in Star Wars: Darth Vader #13 against the famous IG-88. A lightsaber can take an organic opponent out of the fight with a single stroke to a non-vital organ – but the same cannot be said for droids. The destruction of a droid’s limb simply does not matter when it can be repaired in minutes. Unless the core processor sustains a direct hit, the droid will continue to function (this was demonstrated in Revenge of the Sith against General Grievous’ Magnaguards, who continued to fight even when headless and limbless).

Simply put, a lightsaber is too precise a weapon to efficiently cut down droids for good. Even if a Jedi or a Sith slices off all their limbs and stabs them multiple times in the center mass, the droid’s “brain” can still be recovered and placed in a new body; the same cannot be said for a human opponent. This is why Ajax Sigma is a genuine threat against lightsaber-wielders: a single stroke isn’t enough to defeat him (or his many followers). Since a droid’s core processor can theoretically be located anywhere (the head, the body, or even miles away in another ship), Jedi and Sith must either waste their time cutting each robotic opponent to ribbons, or lose the lightsaber in exchange for a conventional blaster – devices that these Star Wars organizations, steeped in tradition, would rarely use on principle.

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