We all remember the moment. In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker faces Darth Vader on Cloud City. It’s one of the most iconic scenes in Star Wars history. During their intense lightsaber duel, Vader cuts off Luke’s hand, sending it – and his blue-bladed lightsaber – plummeting down into the depths of the city.
Now fast forward to The Force Awakens. That same lightsaber shows up again, this time tucked away in Maz Kanata’s castle. When Rey finds it in a wooden box, we’re left with one big question: How did Luke’s lightsaber make it all the way from Cloud City to Maz’s basement?
In the current Disney canon, that question is still almost answered (with all the clues I could gather from the latest materials at the end of this article). But in Legends – the expanded universe stories published before 2014 – we actually do get an explanation of where the lightsaber went all along. And it’s a wild one.
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The Fall at Cloud City
Let’s start at the beginning. After Luke’s hand is severed during the duel, both it and his lightsaber fall through one of Cloud City’s maintenance shafts. What happens next isn’t shown in the movie, but Legends fills in the gap.
In that version of the story, an Ugnaught – a small, pig-like worker species – named Groggin finds Luke’s lightsaber in the smelting core of Cloud City. He plans to melt it down for scrap. But before he can destroy it, Darth Vader arrives.
Vader takes both the severed hand and the lightsaber. Not as a keepsake – but as a gift. He delivers them to Emperor Palpatine, who stores them at a secret Imperial base on the planet Wayland, in a vault known as Mount Tantiss.
From Artifact to Clone
Here’s where things get strange.
A clone of the Jedi Master Jorus C’baoth – named Joruus C’baoth – has taken control of Mount Tantiss. He discovers Luke’s severed hand and lightsaber in the Emperor’s collection. Obsessed with power and twisted by the dark side, Joruus decides to create a clone of Luke Skywalker using tissue from that hand.
He gives the cloning order in secret. The result is Luuke Skywalker – a nearly perfect copy of Luke, created in less than a month in a Spaarti cloning cylinder. Joruus trains Luuke to be strong in the Force and skilled with a lightsaber. And when the time comes, he sends him into battle.
Luuke uses the very same lightsaber Luke lost on Bespin.
The Duel on Mount Tantiss
Eventually, the real Luke Skywalker, now a Jedi Knight, tracks Joruus to Mount Tantiss. He’s joined by Mara Jade, the former Emperor’s Hand. When Luke refuses to serve Joruus, the clone master reveals Luuke.
What follows is one of the most intense duels in Legends storytelling. Luke faces off against a clone who looks exactly like him, thinks like him, and fights just like him. It’s an eerie mirror match.
The battle rages across the Emperor’s throne room. Luuke presses the attack with aggressive Force strikes and lightsaber throws. He nearly overpowers Luke until Mara Jade recovers a lightsaber and strikes the clone down. Her action fulfills a command the Emperor once gave her: “Kill Luke Skywalker.”
After the fight, the original Luke gives his old lightsaber – the one lost on Cloud City and recovered from the clone – to Mara as a gift.
So…How Did the Saber Get to Maz?
That’s the twist: It didn’t. At least, not in this version of the story.
This explanation is part of Star Wars Legends, not the official Disney canon. In this older timeline, the saber never ended up in Maz Kanata’s castle. It went from Luke to Groggin, then to Vader, then to Palpatine, then to the clone Luuke, and finally to Mara Jade.
That’s where the trail ends in Legends.
What About the Canon Version?
In canon, we still don’t know have an official answer how Maz got the saber. In The Force Awakens, she brushes off the question with, “That’s a good question – for another time.” So far, that time hasn’t come.
However, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Visual Dictionary adds one small clue: after Luke lost it in the battle on Cloud City, “someone salvaged it from the city’s industrial depths.”
That phrasing leaves the door open to a couple of possibilities – Maz herself may have recovered it during her travels, or someone else could have found it first and eventually passed it on to her.
And another source – Star Wars (2020) issue #4 – adds more context. Luke actually returned to Cloud City sometime after the events of The Empire Strikes Back to search for the lightsaber but eventually gave up the hunt. Not long after, an Ugnaught discovered it.
That’s the last confirmed sighting of Anakin’s lightsaber in canon before it appears in Maz Kanata’s castle. If we connect the dots, it’s possible Maz either knew this Ugnaught or obtained the saber through channels connected to them.
