Dave Filoni And Jon Favreau Admit They Didn’t Understand How Lightsabers Worked, Claimed George Lucas Had To Step In

Jedi in a scene from Lucasfilm's THE MANDALORIAN, season three, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni recently admitted they had no idea how lightsabers worked when they were making the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – MAY 26: (L-R) Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni attend the studio showcase panel at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California on May 26, 2022. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)

During an interview with StarWars.com, Favreau’s voice acting work on Star Wars: The Clone Wars as Pre Viszla was brought up and it spiraled into a conversation about the origins of the Darksaber and how George Lucas created it because of Filoni and Favreau’s lack of understanding about lightsabers.

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Favreau says, “Life is weird how it all kind of like in retrospect looks like it has followed some path, but at the time it just felt like we were doing things that seem fun and cool and I definitely feel a connection to…”

Filoni chimed in, “The Darksaber,” and Favreau continued, “Yeah, because I was the first one to wield it.”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 28: Executive Producer Dave Filoni attends the Mandalorian special launch event at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, California on February 28, 2023. (Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

He then revealed, “Because that was a rewrite too. I did not have it. I had a vibroblade. And I finished recording all this stuff and I get a call, ‘You gotta come back. We have to redo it.’ Why? George didn’t think the logic of the vibroblade being able to parry a lightsaber. It had to be another lightsaber. So he invented the Darksaber.”

“I had to read the whole monologue about how it was found in the Jedi Temple and all of this stuff,” he detailed.

ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – MAY 26: (L-R) Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni attend the studio showcase panel at Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, California on May 26, 2022. (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)

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Favreau continued, “And I was telling my wife, she’s like, ‘That’s the coolest thing. He gets it.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh! It is cool. This is great!’ And it became so cool that we ended up making a whole TV show about it.”

“So, it was again George’s instincts to know that something didn’t sit right. And that whole idea and how profound that thing is that Tarre Vizsla was both Mandalorian and Jedi and those are two diametrically opposed warring factions,” he stated.

Favreau would go on to try and tie this story into the third season of The Mandalorian claiming the show looks at “anomalies” like Tarre Vizsla’s dual allegiance to the Mandalorians and Jedi, and specifically noted they will explore the helmet dilemma the show introduced for Mandalorians.

Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) holding the Darksaber in a scene from Lucasfilm’s THE MANDALORIAN, season three, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

Back in 2020 in a behind-the-scenes featurette on the weapon, Filoni previously said, “Well, the Darksaber was first created on Clone Wars. George wrote that little speech for Pre Vizsla.”

“What I added to that was this idea that the Darksaber was Mandalorian made,” he continued. “That is something that the Mandalorians felt was part of their heritage, would make it way more valuable. And when Sabine holds it, you get that she has something very ancient, very rare, and very specific.” 

Interestingly, Darksaber was actually a Star Wars novel written by Kevin J. Andersen back in 1995. The weapon was actually a version of the Death Star’s superlaser created by the Death Star’s original designer Bevel Lemelisk.

It had nothing to do with the Mandalorians whatsoever.

Star Wars Darksaber (1995), Bantam Spectra

What do you make of Favreau and Filoni’s admission that they didn’t understand how lightsabers worked?

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