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Star Wars: Rey's Hinged Lightsaber In TROS Was Originally Designed For Clone Wars Character


There are several reasons why people can't stop talking about "Dark Rey" in the new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker teaser but most of the discussions are focused on the red double-edged lightsaber. However, you might remember that this isn't the first time that a hinged lightsaber has been seen in the Star Wars Universe. The original design actually came from a Jedi who appeared in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

This was confirmed by Star Wars artist Chris Glenn, who had previously worked on The Clone Wars. Glenn spoke to Ziro.hu about coming up with the hinged lightsaber for a strange-looking character.

"This idea came about in early Season 4 of The Clone Wars. I designed a large Jedi named Pong Krell, and he had four arms. The idea from Dave Filoni was to give him two sets of double-lightsabers like Darth Maul. So after designing the character, I designed the lightsaber props as well," Glenn revealed.

Glenn also explained why he had to create a special weapon for Pong.

"The problem was because Pong Krell was so large, the lightsabers had to be larger as well to fit his hands. Which meant, they were too long to hang from his belt. So the choice was either have them attach to his back, or design a way for them to fold," he said. As you can see in the video below, Filoni liked the folding option.

So it's not that original but Glenn certainly loved it when he was the hinged lightsaber being used by Dark Rey in the Rise of Skywalker footage from D23 Expo 2019.

"I thought it was fun to see. There's a ton of designs and content created for all the Star Wars properties, and it's common for ideas to travel between the different projects. If a design didn't work for an episode, it might show up later in a comic book or toy," he said.

For now, it's unclear if the weapon will actually get some action considering that people believe it's only a dream or a vision. Nevertheless, it's definitely one of the coolest weapons we've seen in Star Wars.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters on December 20.

Related: Star Wars: Ahsoka Tano Movie Gets Impressive Fan Trailer

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