Luke Skywalker is remembered for rebuilding the Jedi Order and carrying his green lightsaber, yet in Legends he also wielded a second, red-bladed weapon after becoming Grand Master. The strange part is that Luke had constructed it decades earlier for one very specific enemy. Why did a Jedi like Luke ever need a Sith lightsaber?
Lumiya’s Lightwhip Defeated Luke’s Normal Lightsaber
Luke first encountered Lumiya’s lightwhip on Kinooine, long before he became Grand Master. Their first battle appeared in Marvel’s Star Wars #95, while the later Legends novel Legacy of the Force: Tempest returned to the same rivalry and the unusual weapon Luke had created to fight her.
Lumiya was Shira Brie, the former Imperial agent who had infiltrated the Rebel Alliance and blamed Luke for the injuries that left much of her body cybernetic. When she returned as the Dark Lady Lumiya, she carried a lightwhip composed of several flexible lashes rather than one straight blade. Some produced lightsaber energy, while others were physical strands, allowing her to attack from several directions at once.
Luke entered their first duel with only his green lightsaber. Whenever he blocked one lash, the others could curl around his guard, strike from another angle, or entangle his weapon. The defensive techniques he normally used against another lightsaber wielder could not control several independently moving strands with a single blade.
Lumiya defeated him and nearly killed him during that first confrontation. The loss showed Luke that greater speed or strength would not solve the problem. As long as one lightsaber had to intercept every part of the lightwhip, Lumiya controlled the duel. Before facing her again in Star Wars #96, Luke constructed a shorter second lightsaber specifically to divide that defensive burden between two blades.
Luke Built a Red Shoto and Later Used It Again as Grand Master
Before his rematch with Lumiya in Marvel’s Star Wars #96, Luke constructed a second lightsaber with a much shorter blade. Known as a shoto, it was small enough to control in his off hand while he continued wielding his normal green lightsaber with the other. The weapon’s blade was red, although Legends never established that Luke chose the color for any symbolic reason or used the modern Sith practice of bleeding a kyber crystal.
The two blades allowed Luke to divide Lumiya’s lightwhip between them. His full-length lightsaber could catch or redirect the main lashes, while the shoto protected the openings left by the others. Once he moved inside the whip’s wider striking range, the shorter weapon also gave him a blade he could use without interfering with his primary lightsaber.
During their rematch, Luke’s new fighting method removed the advantage that had allowed Lumiya to defeat him before. He disarmed her lightwhip and cut through part of her armor, finally discovering that the Dark Lady was Shira Brie. The red shoto had been created for one opponent and one specific weapon rather than as a replacement for Luke’s green lightsaber.
Decades later, Lumiya returned in the novel Legacy of the Force: Tempest. Luke was now Grand Master of the rebuilt Jedi Order, but her lightwhip presented the same problem it had during their earlier battles. He therefore retrieved the old red shoto and fought with both weapons again, using the longer blade to control the whip while closing the distance with the shorter one.