The Acolyte Season 1 finale showed us a lightsaber change color while in use. As Osha learns the truth of Sol’s betrayal, she begins giving into the Dark Side, eventually taking out her old Jedi Master with a Vader-style Force choke. This is enough to change her saber from blue to red, which looks cool onscreen but introduces a prequel plot hole: if giving into the Dark Side can change a lightsaber red, then why didn’t Anakin Skywalker’s blade ever change color when he was slaughtering younglings and generally committing Jedi genocide?

Sol’s Crimes

For this pesky prequel problem to make sense, we must first dive a bit deeper into The Acolyte and what caused Osha’s lightsaber (which was really Sol’s stolen lightsaber) to change from blue to red. The whole season had been built around a mystery regarding just what happened on Brendok and how culpable the Jedi were in the death and chaos that happened on that planet.

In the season 1 finale, both Osha and Mae learn that Sol killed their mother Aniseya in his ignorance and self-righteousness and spent years lying about this to everyone from Osha to his fellow Jedi.

Blue To Red

His confession has a very interesting effect on the twins: Mae, the Jedi-killing villain of the story up until this point, is willing to spare Sol’s life and wants him to confess his crimes to the Jedi Council.

Osha, ostensibly the good girl, is so outraged by Sol’s confession that she turns to the Dark Side, using the Force to choke out and kill her former mentor. And in arguably most striking The Acolyte visual of the season, the lightsaber she is wielding changes from blue to red, not so subtly indicating that she’s now playing for the bad guys.

Anakin’s Lightsaber Remained Blue

Since subtlety is already out the window, we’ll jump right to it: The Acolyte proving a lightsaber can change color to represent changing allegiances looks cool, but it retroactively creates a plot hole for the prequels.

In Attack of the Clones and especially Revenge of the Sith, we see Anakin Skywalker indulging his inner Dark Side, first by slaughtering a bunch of Tusken Raiders and then by killing countless Jedi, starting with the younglings. Why, then, does his lightsaber never change from blue to red at any point during his multiple killing sprees?

The Crack

Now, some fans have already tried to win a Marvel-style No Prize for explaining what happened: for example, because the color is supposed to change due to the kyber crystal sensing changing emotional alignment, some think it only transformed for Osha because the hilt was cracked.

These fans think the crack was enough to expose the crystal to emotional energy it would otherwise be shielded from. However, it’s frankly insane to think that 1) there are special metals in a galaxy far, far away that can block emotions 2) all lightsaber hilts are made of such a metal.

The Acolyte Ended Well

That last point is particularly important because emotion-blocking metal would seemingly help prevent access to the Force, yet Qimir is the only one who ever had the sense to build a Magneto-style helmet to hide from other Force users.

The metal he uses is cortosis, which is both rare and exotic, something far more exotic than what goes into the average lightsaber hilt.

As usual, the technology of Star Wars makes no sense once you stop and think about it for more than two seconds. Since we generally liked how The Acolyte’s first season ended, we’re going to do what all fans should on this hot summer day: stop complaining about The Acolyte lightsaber colors and pretend the next Rocket Pop popsicle we eat is a laser sword bleeding from one color to the next.