In the years before the Battle of Yavin in the Galactic Civil War, former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano used a pair of white lightsabers as her own arms, these curved hilt lightsabers replaced the blue and green ones she had during the Clone Wars before leaving the Jedi Order. Ahsoka’s white lightsabers were more than just striking visual weapons, they represented her complex path through the light and dark sides of the Force following Order 66 and the rise of the Empire.
Who is Ahsoka Tano?
Ahsoka Tano, a Togruta girl, was a Force-sensitive ex-Jedi who helped create a network of rebel groups against the Galactic Empire after the Clone Wars.Jedi Master Plo Koon found her on her home planet Shili and brought her to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant to train. When the Clone Wars started, Jedi Grand Master Yoda made her the Padawan of Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker who called her “Snips” when she joined him at the Battle of Christophsis. Though eager to prove herself, Tano found Skywalker to be reckless and their master-apprentice relationship was challenging at first. However, they managed to rescue “Rotta” the son of crime lord Jabba the Hutt, and returned him to his father helping secure an important alliance between the Hutt Clan and the Galactic Republic.
As a commander in the Republic’s army, Ahsoka Tano was mentored by Clone Captain Rex of the 501st Legion. She and Anakin Skywalker led many frontline battles against the Confederacy of Independent Systems. In her first mission at the Battle of Ryloth, Tano disobeyed orders and lost her squadron but she managed to help win the battle, she faced many enemies including General Grievous, Sith apprentice Asajj Ventress and bounty hunters like Cad Bane and Aurra Sing. Over time, she became a respected leader and played a big role in important battles like the Second Battle of Geonosis and the Battle of Mon Cala. Tano even died during events on Mortis but the Daughter, a Force wielder who represented the light side, sacrificed herself to bring Ahsoka Tano back to life.
Tano learned a lot from her experiences during and after the war. She led a group of Jedi younglings to escape from their Trandoshan captors, helped free a Togruta colony from the Zygerrian Slave Empire, and advised the Onderon rebels including her friend Lux Bonteri, as they fought against the Confederacy.
Then, Tano was wrongly accused of bombing the Jedi Temple hangar and other murders, she fled to the Coruscant Underworld to prove her innocence, she teamed up with Asajj Ventress but was still captured by Republic forces and expelled from the Jedi Order. Skywalker discovered that the real culprit was Tano’s friend and fellow Padawan “Barriss Offee” stopping her from being found guilty of sedition. Despite this, Tano lost trust in the Jedi, she declined the Jedi High Council’s offer to return and chose to find a new path.
Tano came back briefly to lead Republic forces during the Siege of Mandalore and fought against Maul and his followers. Soon after Maul was captured, Order 66 was issued. Tano and Rex managed to escape from the rest of her 501st division after she freed Rex from Order 66’s control. She then pretended to be dead and went into hiding.
After the Galactic Empire took over, Tano went into hiding on Thabeska and Raada, using the name “Ashla” After leaving Raada, she joined Senator Bail Organa’s growing rebel movement, she managed his intelligence network and used the codename “Fulcrum”. As Fulcrum, Tano gave information to different rebel groups including Hera Syndulla’s team “the Spectres”. She was particularly interested in Syndulla’s group because one of its members Kanan Jarrus was training his own Padawan Ezra Bridger.
Tano’s work against the Empire brought her into contact with Darth Vader (who was actually her old master Anakin Skywalker) and the Imperial Inquisitors known as the Fifth Brother and the Seventh Sister. After a mission to Malachor, Tano got lost in the ruins of the Sith temple and was believed dead by many including Jarrus and Bridger after a fight with Darth Vader.
Tano was saved from Vader by a future version of Ezra Bridger who pulled her into the World Between Worlds, a mystical plane of the Force that connects all times and places. After a confrontation with Darth Sidious who wanted to access the dimension, Tano returned to her time and promised Bridger she would find him.
After the Galactic Civil War ended, Tano joined Sabine Wren to find Bridger who went missing during the Liberation of Lothal, she trained Wren in Jedi ways until they parted, Tano then went to the city of Calodan on the forest planet Corvus to find Grand Admiral Thrawn from Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth. To free the city from Elsbeth’s rule, she teamed up with the Mandalorian Din Djarin who was trying to bring the Force-sensitive Grogu to the Jedi. After freeing Calodan, Tano refused to train Grogu and told Djarin to go to the planet Tython instead.
Later, she visited Luke Skywalker at his new Jedi Temple. When Skywalker found Grogu after a call from the seeing stone, Tano temporarily helped with the child’s training.
When Thrawn returned, Tano went back to Lothal and asked Wren for help again to find Bridger and the missing Grand Admiral. Many years after she began her search, Tano’s voice, along with those of other Jedi spirits, guided the young Jedi Rey who was the granddaughter of a resurrected Darth Sidious, during the final battle of the First Order-Resistance War. Ahsoka encouraged Rey to stand up to Sidious and defeat him once and for all.
Ahsoka Tano had two different sets of lightsabers, she first built a lightsaber with a silver handle and a green blade before becoming Anakin Skywalker’s Padawan at the Battle of Christophsis. After using it for some time, she made a shorter lightsaber with a similar handle and a yellow-green blade. Both sabers had kyber crystals from the sacred planet of Ilum. She used these lightsabers until she left the Jedi Order. Her former master Skywalker took care of them and made some improvements by changing their blades to blue when he gave them back to Tano before the Siege of Mandalore. Tano later abandoned the sabers on a moon after Order 66 to fake her death. After the Clone Wars, she made a new pair of lightsabers with white blades.
Ahsoka Tano’s White Lightsabers:
The Design
Ahsoka Tano’s white lightsabers had curved hilts with a rectangular shape. When she first made them, the hilts were rough because she had to put them together quickly in the middle of a battle using scrap metal. Like her original lightsabers, she had one regular saber and one shorter shoto saber. The blades were white, powered by two kyber crystals she took from the lightsaber of the Imperial Inquisitor known as the Sixth Brother, she purified the crystals of their dark side corruption before assembling her lightsabers. Tano used various mechanical parts she found during her travels and special components from the Sixth Brother’s lightsaber, she believed the kyber crystals were originally taken from the Jedi Temple after the Jedi Order fell.
The Story Behind Ahsoka Tano’s White Lightsabers:
Crafting White Lightsabers
On Raada, events led Ahsoka to craft her white lightsabers, the Empire occupied Raada forcing Ahsoka and her friends to be rebels against the oppressive regime, an Inquisitor came hunting for the secret Force sensitive rebel leader and caught Ahsoka’s friend Kaeden Larte, with help from Bail Organa’s early rebels, Ahsoka realized she needed to build new lightsabers to confront the Imperial threat.
Ahsoka Tano needed new kyber crystals so she traveled to Ilum, a planet where Jedi had collected crystals for centuries. However, she discovered that the Empire was mining the planet and had to hide to avoid being seen. While meditating, she felt a call through the Force that directed her back to Raada.
She asked Senator Organa to help evacuate Raada’s people and returned to find Miara who had been hiding after an Inquisitor attacked the caves where she, her sister Kaeden and their friends had been hiding. Miara was the only survivor after Kaeden’s capture. Ahsoka sent Miara to start the evacuation while she followed the call of her crystals.
Ahsoka confronted the Sixth Brother, an Inquisitor, without any weapons. Despite this, she easily defeated him.
Ahsoka Tano took the kyber crystals from the dead Inquisitor’s lightsaber which had been calling out to her, she saw that the crystals had been turned red through a process called bleeding. Knowing the crystals were meant for her, she purified them back to the light side of the Force turning them pure white.
Ahsoka used the parts she had collected and the crystal mountings from the Inquisitor’s lightsaber to make two new lightsabers. The hilts were rough but she didn’t have time to improve them, she used them to save Kaeden and help the evacuation of Raada’s populace by Organa’s rebel cell becoming the codename “Fulcrum” to improve the fledgling rebellion’s encrypted communications.
Fulcrum
Over the years, Ahsoka Tano improved her lightsabers by making the hilts more functional and decorative with new curved designs. Fifteen years after the Empire’s rise, Tano met the rebel group called “the Spectres” which included Jedi Padawan Kanan Jarrus and his apprentice Ezra Bridger, she used her lightsabers to give Bridger a combat lesson.
On a mission to rescue a contact, Ahsoka and Sabine Wren navigated a submerged freighter that had crashed on the ocean world of Quila. Tano used her lightsabers to cut through large debris creating a path for them. Later, during a mission to save Force-sensitive infants from the Empire, Tano fought Inquisitors Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister in Hammertown on Takobo, she easily defeated them but spared their lives allowing Jarrus and Bridger to escape with Alora, Pypey and Pypey’s mother Oora.
Later, Ahsoka went with Bridger and Jarrus to the Lothal Jedi Temple. While meditating inside the temple, Ahsoka had a Force vision of Anakin. In the vision, Anakin was angry and accused Ahsoka of being selfish and abandoning him, he asked if she knew what he had become, then transformed into Darth Vader. Unable to accept this terrible truth, Ahsoka struck at the vision with her lightsaber with tears in her eyes, she was left alone in the darkness to deal with this revelation.
After visiting the Lothal Jedi Temple on Jedi Master Yoda’s advice, Tano, Jarrus and Bridger went to the forbidden planet Malachor to find out how to defeat the Sith. There, they ran into an Inquisitor who was looking for Maul. Tano had last seen Maul when she escaped Order 66, and he had been stuck in the ruins of the Malachor Sith Temple for a while. When the Eighth Brother called for help, Tano and Jarrus teamed up with Maul to fight the three Inquisitors, but when Maul turned against them, Tano didn’t want to fight him again, instead, she told the injured Jarrus to handle Maul because she sensed a bigger threat coming: Darth Vader.
Tano arrived just in time to save Bridger from Vader, she fought fiercely with the Sith Lord. Vader knocked her off the top of the temple and went back to deal with the two Jedi. However, Tano got back up and surprised him from behind cutting part of his helmet and revealing his right eye. While they kept fighting, Jarrus and Bridger escaped in the Phantom before the Sith Temple exploded.
A few years later, Bridger found a portal to the World Between Worlds from the Lothal Jedi Temple. Through this portal, he saw Tano still fighting Vader. She was losing ground in the duel, so Bridger pulled her into the timeless Force realm just before the temple was destroyed.
After being in the World Between Worlds for a while, Tano and Bridger had to escape when the Emperor used Sith alchemy to attack them through another portal. Tano used her lightsabers to stop the fiery energy from pulling Bridger in, and they both fled. They went back through the portals they came from, with Tano promising to find Bridger again someday.
Back on Malachor, Tano went under the ruins of the Sith Temple and began a spiritual journey that changed her life. Eventually, she left Malachor. Years later, after the Galactic Civil War, Tano still carried her lightsabers. While traveling with Professor Huyang, Tano started training Bridger’s friend Sabine Wren as her apprentice, but their relationship ended badly.
Chasing the Grand Admiral
In the year 9 ABY, Ahsoka Tano was still using her white lightsabers while searching for Grand Admiral Thrawn, she found out that a former Nightsister witch named Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth was working for Thrawn, so Ahsoka went to the forested planet Corvus. There, she became a threat to Elsbeth’s control over the city of Calodan and used her lightsabers to defeat Elsbeth’s guards.
The next day, Ahsoka attacked Din Djarin with her white lightsabers thinking he was an enemy. Once they cleared up the misunderstanding, Din helped Ahsoka sneak into Elsbeth’s sanctuary. Elsbeth, armed with a spear made of pure beskar, fought Ahsoka and even knocked one of her lightsabers into a pond. Despite this, Ahsoka, now fighting with just her shoto lightsaber, managed to disarm Elsbeth and demanded to know where Grand Admiral Thrawn was.
By defeating Elsbeth, Ahsoka ended her rule over Calodan and freed the oppressed villagers. However, Elsbeth was later freed from New Republic custody by two hired mercenaries, former Jedi Baylan Skoll and his apprentice Shin Hati.
Tano kept using her lightsabers while she reunited with Wren and continued her search for Thrawn with Huyang and her Padawan. During this time, Tano fought against Elsbeth’s HK-87 assassin droids, scout guards, the former Inquisitor Marrok and Skoll. Ahsoka Tano and Wren found Thrawn and Bridger on the distant planet Peridea. Tano had another duel with Skoll, and with Bridger and Wren, they fought Thrawn’s Night Troopers to try to stop his escape from Peridea.
In the battle, the Night Troopers were killed but were brought back to life by Thrawn’s allies, the Nightsisters known as the Great Mothers. These revived Troopers could rise again even after being hit by lightsabers or blaster bolts. Tano also fought and killed Elsbeth who was now using a Blade of Talzin and had been formally welcomed into the Nightsister order. While Bridger managed to escape back to the galaxy on Thrawn’s Star Destroyer Chimaera, Tano, Wren and Huyang were left stranded on Peridea.
Ahsoka’s Lightsaber Form and Combat Style
The lightsaber form of Ahsoka Tano is Djem So, a variant of Form V, which allows her to use a shorter second lightsaber, this makes her fighting style unique and effective. The Shien variant adds extra defense and is excellent for deflecting blaster shots, a skill that helped Ahsoka survive Order 66.
Ahsoka was trained by Anakin Skywalker who also liked Form V, especially Djem So, he used it for its aggressive attacks and because it was good against other lightsabers and blasters. Anakin taught Ahsoka this style to prepare her for the dangers of the Clone Wars.
During the Clone Wars, there were many lightsaber-wielding enemies like General Grievous, Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress. Djem So’s sudden attacks helped Jedi catch these enemies off guard. The Shien variant allowed Ahsoka to fight up close giving her an edge against other lightsaber users.
Djem So is known for its strong and powerful attacks. Both Anakin and Ahsoka used similar moves despite their size differences making them tough fighters. This style is fluid, allowing for easy switches to defense and surprising opponents with unexpected attacks.
Ahsoka’s use of the Shien variant adds defensive moves and acrobatics, her unique grip on her lightsabers further customizes her style giving her more freedom in combat. Though Ahsoka’s skills seem unique, they are based on solid Jedi training. Her use of Djem So makes her a powerful warrior, even after she left the Jedi Order.
The Meaning Behind Ahsoka’s White Lightsabers
Ahsoka’s white lightsabers indicate her status as a gray Jedi, balanced with the Force. Unlike the Jedi and Sith who are opposites, Ahsoka is somewhere in the middle. However, she’s different from Mace Windu whose purple lightsaber represents a mix of the Light and Dark sides of the Force. Dave Filoni, one of the creators of the “Star Wars Rebels” TV show explained that the white color of the blades shows that Ahsoka is not aligned with either the Jedi or the Sith.
Ahsoka values peace above all. She has moved away from the Jedi’s violent ways of keeping peace without falling into the anger and pain that can come from being a warrior. Unlike Mace Windu, Ahsoka doesn’t use the Force as a weapon under the Jedi Order’s command. The Jedi haven’t always been right in resolving conflicts. Her white lightsabers show her neutrality with the Force, not a mastery of both Light and Dark sides like Windu. Ahsoka uses the Force only to save lives and protect peace.
Behind the Scenes
Ahsoka’s white lightsabers were first seen in the “Fire Across the Galaxy” episode, the final episode of the first season of Star Wars Rebels. While working on The Mandalorian series, property master Josh Roth noticed that Ahsoka’s lightsabers were becoming larger due to the batteries, receivers and wireless gadgets inside them. Director Filoni stated that the lightsabers couldn’t look like that so they decided to power them with an external battery.
Frequently Asked Questions
While using her two lightsabers, Ahsoka adopted the Jar’Kai fighting style involving dual blade combat, she also continued to utilize her distinctive reverse grip when wielding the sabers.
Ahsoka uses two lightsabers with one being shorter than the other making her unique among Jedi and lightsaber users, the shorter one is “a shoto blade”, it gives her better control and extra support when fighting with both lightsabers at the same time.
The kyber crystals Ahsoka uses in her lightsabers were originally from a Sith, she had to realign them to the light side of the Force, this caused her lightsaber blades to become white in color.
Darth Vader kept one of Ahsoka Tano’s lightsabers for an evil purpose, potentially using its kyber crystal to make his own lightsaber more powerful.
