10 Important Star Wars Details That Are Almost Never Mentioned

3. How Maz Kanata Acquired Luke's Lightsaber

Maz Kanata Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Lucasfilm

When Maz Kanata pulls Luke Skywalker's blue lightsaber from a box and hands it to Finn in The Force Awakens, Han Solo asks her where she got it. Her response? "A good question, for another time."

In hindsight, her refusal to give an explanation feels startlingly similar to Poe's "somehow... Palpatine has returned" in The Rise of Skywalker, and though this particular detail arguably isn't as important, it's nonetheless frustrating that the movies never reveal how Maz acquired a lightsaber that was presumed lost deep within Cloud City. After all, that lightsaber plays a crucial role in the sequel trilogy, so it feels a bit lazy to just dismiss where it came from.

Some fans have head-canonized that because Maz was a "pirate queen", she acquired it via her connections to the smuggling world. After all, she's lived a long life, so had plenty of time to stumble across it. Other Star Wars media has discussed the lightsaber's post-Luke fate too, revealing that a random Ugnaught found it on Cloud City, and kept it from being destroyed.

But as for how it made its way into Maz's hands? That's a detail for another time.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!