Kylo Ren’s lightsaber continues to elicit discussion. With its unique design and red, jagged blades, his crossguard lightsaber is a fascinating point of interest. One recent question is what would happen if someone tried to cut the vents on this type of lightsaber? We have two main explanations to explore to answer this question.
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What Would Actually Happen If You Cut the Crossguard?
Before we get technical, let’s start with a more playful take, because fans on Reddit already asked the question in the most perfect way possible.
One post on r/StarWars put it like this:
If you managed to cut the vent/crossguard would it look like the left or the right?
byu/avaslash inStarWars
On the left: a cleanly functioning saber with intact side vents.
On the right: one vent appears to be severed, and the plasma is spiraling out like a wild firehose.
Naturally, Star Wars fans had a blast theorizing which version is more realistic. Would the plasma go haywire and vent uncontrollably like in the right image? Or would it simply fizzle out, with no major effect? Personally, I’m going with the right image—pure chaos, flaming plasma jetting sideways like a busted exhaust pipe. It just feels more fitting for Kylo’s unstable saber.
Now that we’ve had our fun, let’s shift from fan jokes to the real physics and lore behind Kylo’s unique saber design.
Explanation One: Null Effect
If someone, say Rey, were to cut into the vents of a crossguard lightsaber, like Kylo Ren’s, most likely nothing would happen. That’s the lead explanation from fans in this discussion, pointing out the scene in which Rey and Kylo duel in The Rise of Skywalker as evidence.
Indeed, when we rewatch the scene, Rey’s blade appears not to damage Kylo’s. After much smashing of blades and Force stops, Rey grinds her lightsaber into one of Kylo’s crossguard vents, but his lightsaber is unaffected. That explanation aligns with how his blade was built.
The lateral vents of Kylo’s lightsaber are meant to divert “the extra heat produced by the crystal”. As such, those side vents are still fueled by the unique, broken kyber crystal. So, when Rey struck his vent, it was equivalent to hitting a similar plasma as the main blade.
Another way to explain this null effect is how lightsabers are attracted to one another. A fan from the Reddit board above stresses how lightsabers have “properties that make them attracted to each other.” We can even see a demonstration in the scene referenced of Kanan and Sabine in Rebels.
Hitting blade against blade or through attraction, we arrive at no damage. However, we can also see how the crossguard lightsaber vents could get damaged, at least to some extent.
This past discussion about Kylo’s lightsaber focuses on how the cross-guard is “surrounded by metal.” In the accompanying diagram, we see a blown-up image of the vent shrouds that serve to contain the side-emitting blades or quillons. That raises the question of what type of metal is used for the vent shrouds?
Explanation Two: Some Damage, Unless it’s Cortosis
Kylo Ren’s Wookieepedia lightsaber page only indicates that the hilt material is a “heat-hardened industrial alloy.” Durasteel is a metal alloy that we are familiar with and that is often used for lightsaber hilts. By extension, the vents could be made of the same material.
Following this train of thought, the durasteel vents would stand up to a lightsaber blow, but probably not to the pressure that Rey was exerting on Kylo’s vent shrouds. We would expect some damage to the vents in this situation.
Yet, could the vent shroud’s metal be beskar? Beskar, as we know, is customarily used for Mandalorian armor and weapons. It would be unlikely that it was used for crossguard lightsabers in general, but maybe Kylo’s unique crossguard could have it.
If Kylo does have a stronger metal than durasteel for the vents, it’s more likely to be cortosis. Because of The Acolyte, cortosis was brought to the knowledge of wider audiences as a unique metal that could withstand lightsaber blows.
Introduced in Michael Stackpole’s I, Jedi novel, we saw cortosis gauntlets and a helmet with the Stranger/Quimir in The Acolyte. With its propensity to briefly short out lightsabers, cortosis could stand up to a lightsaber blow and could be our explanation for the Rey-Kylo duel.
Yet, compared to beskar, “cortosis is not particularly strong.” So, it may not help us after all. Perhaps in the way this metal can “absorb, dissipate, and transfer energy”, though, we can see how the vents may not have been damaged. If Kylo used cortosis for his vent shrouds, that could explain the way Rey’s blade was being deflected.
Cutting the Vents on a Crossguard Lightsaber
When a lightsaber attempts to cut the vents on a crossguard lightsaber, nothing occurs with reference to the side-emitting blades or quillons. Yet, if the opponent’s lightsaber strikes the metal, which seems to be the case with Rey, then the crossguard would likely sustain some damage if the metal is durasteel. However, if Kylo employed cortosis for the shrouds, his lightsaber would still be fine.