“New Rules” for Star Wars:  Segunda Parte

As a quick refresher to Part One, Adam Driver stated:

I said what Rian had written was remarkable. He created new rules for the “Star Wars” universe and balanced the familiar and unfamiliar very adeptly while respecting that his audience can handle ambiguity.

We theorize that The Last Jedi will expose us to some ideas that challenge our knowledge of Star Wars and the Force. We've already covered Force Trees, and how they may feature prominently in the new movie. Now we explore another:

II. Kyber Crystals

Most Star Wars fans are vaguely familiar with Kyber crystals, at least insofar as they power lightsabers. Information about them was prevalent throughout Legends (old Expanded Universe), although they didn't figure into the actual films in any way. Not only have they been growing in prominence throughout the new canon, we now have actually seen a kyber crystal on screen in Rogue One.

In both animated TV series, kyber crystals are featured several times, shown as part of a rite of passage for young Jedi, and as the power source for lightsabers. Perhaps more importantly, in the recent Marvel Darth Vader comic series, it is revealed that kybers respond to the light side of the Force, so that Sith must "dominate" the crystal with their dark side powers to subjugate them to their will, making them "bleed" red in the process when powering Sith lightsabers.

In Rogue One, we get our first movie appearance of a kyber crystal when one is given to a young Jyn Erso by her mother. Later, while on Jedha, Jyn is "discovered" by the Jedi-adjace Chirrut Îmwe, presumably due to the crystal calling out to him. Galen Erso researched the energy inherent in the crystals so as to fuel his superweapon and power the main planet-destroying laser.

In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren has a crackling red lightsaber blade. Drawing a connection to the previously mentioned comic series (among other sources), we know that Kylo cracked his kyber crystal, and engineered the vents in the hilt to release extra energy in order to keep the blade somewhat stable. We may surmise that Kylo damaged the crystal in a failed attempt to fully dominate it, perhaps due to his own internal conflict with The Force. We got what may be another glimpse of kyber power in TFA when Anakin's lightsaber seemingly called out to Rey and induced her Force visions.

Kybers will soon be immortalized in plastic as part of the venerable Vintage Collection. According to the 2017 SDCC Star Wars presentation, there will be an Imperial Hover Tank from Rogue One introduced into the upcoming TVC line. Among the features described are removable kyber crystal power containers, which are also designed to allow for the removal of the kyber crystals themselves from the containers. Although Hasbro has been known to have some pretty awesome "Easter eggs" in a few of their toys in the past, it would seem unlikely that details such as these would be included in the Hover Tank if Disney/Lucasfilm and Hasbro didn't feel it was important enough to give collectors access to kyber crystals in some form.

So what does this mean for the next film? We speculate we will get a lot deeper into kyber crystal lore, which at the very least could explain why, according to Pablo Hidalgo, this is no longer Anakin's lightsaber, but Rey's. Also, a kyber crystal reaching out through The Force might be part of the story as to how the darn thing was even recovered from Cloud City in the first place.

Finally, there may be a happy connection to the Force Trees we previously discussed. According to Wookieepedia, kyber crystals respond "only to life, including plant life." So perhaps there may be some synergy in The Last Jedi between a Force Tree and a kyber crystal.

For further reading, a couple of sources give nice rundowns of the increasing importance of Kyber crystals in the new canon, such as Screenrant and Slashfilm .

Coming soon, Part Three.

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