How did Luke Skywalker end up with Yoda’s lightsaber?

At the very end of The Book of Boba Fett Chapter 6, Luke Skywalker offers Grogu something very significant, yet unexpected: Yoda’s lightsaber.

Luke tells Grogu to choose between either the lightsaber, and with it embracing the Jedi path, or the beskar gift from Din Djarin, embracing the Mandalorian foundling path. We don’t get to see Grogu’s choice in the episode, but even seeing Yoda’s lightsaber was an awesome moment, as is the thought of Grogu possibly wielding it one day.

It does raise an interesting canon concern, however, that’s worth discussing, as we don’t know how Luke came to possess the lightsaber of his old master. But we had previously been led to believe that it was destroyed.

After Yoda lost the lightsaber in his duel against Darth Sidious in Revenge of the Sith, the Darth Vader comic written by Charles Soule (the 2017 comic series) showed that it was recovered. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader watch as Grand Vizier Mas Amedda leads a rally before a massive crowd on Coruscant, throwing numerous Jedi lightsabers into a compartment and then lighting them on fire. One of the lightsabers that he holds up into the air before throwing it in is Yoda’s lightsaber. As they watch this, Palpatine and Vader talk about the need for a Sith to bleed and corrupt the lightsaber crystal. “You could have given me any one of those lightsabers to corrupt,” Vader concludes to Palpatine. “Even Yoda’s. But you did not. The saber of a Sith is not given. It is taken.”

That poses an immediate problem, however, since in that issue we saw Yoda’s lightsaber being destroyed, yet in The Book of Boba Fett we see Luke Skywalker in possession of it. Before we just assume that the showrunners ignored this event in the comic, however, I think there’s some ways it can actually be explained. Because in fact, the continuity issue was NOT created by this show but has been in place for years, if people cared to look. In a 2016 reference book, Yoda’s lightsaber was said to be stored in his hut on Dagobah. But in this 2017 comic, it was destroyed by the Empire immediately after Revenge of the Sith.

Another piece to add to the puzzle is the narration of the story about Yoda in the Age of Rebellion Special (published in 2019), which was written by Marc Guggenheim. In that, we see Yoda hunting for food, and the narration of the story says: “He carries no lightsaber. He would never diminish the weapon of the Jedi in pursuit of filling his own belly. In any case, he resolved long ago he would never wield another lightsaber. As part of his penance. For the hubris that led to the fall of his Order. For the blindness that led to his exile. For the shame of knowing that the consequences of that failure even now continue to plague the galaxy. No, he will not swing a Jedi’s lambent blade again.”

So it seems like Yoda did not continue to use his lightsaber on Dagobah, but does that mean he didn’t have one with him? Not necessarily. Back in 2019, Matt Martin of the Lucasfilm story group was asked about the discrepancy between the reference book and the Darth Vader comic, and he responded that they were aware of it but that it actually wasn’t a contradiction:

Yup we were aware of that. It’s not an error though, it was clear from RotS that he didn’t leave Coruscant with that saber. A 900 year old Jedi has probably had more than a few sabers in his life.

— Matt Martin (@missingwords) February 11, 2019

In that answer he’s not giving a definitive statement, presumably because that’s for future stories to explore, but he does make it clear that they knew about the issue and have a very reasonable explanation for it in their minds. After all, that’s what matters, right? And it would certainly not be the first time that we’ve seen a Jedi use multiple lightsabers. In fact, during the prequel trilogy – which spans a little over a decade – we see Obi-Wan Kenobi use three different lightsabers and Anakin Skywalker use two. And that’s in just about a decade! How many would a Jedi have had over 900 years, then! This, to me, is easily a good enough explanation for it for now. Yoda likely had multiple lightsabers that he had used, and now the question is only about why he would have had multiple at a time. But those details can be answered down the road, should a storyteller choose, and are not integral to things.

Author Charles Soule also threw out a few other options about what happened:

He built a new one. Or he had more than one. Or Palpatine made up a fake one to make a point. Y’know?

Errors, seek not. Stories, enjoy you should!

— Charles Soule (@CharlesSoule) February 11, 2019

So maybe he already had another lightsaber that he kept around, and he just took that with him into hiding. Or maybe he built a new one after losing it against Sidious. Or maybe Sidious even created a fake one as propaganda – something we shouldn’t put it past the Emperor to do. The point isn’t to have it all answered right now; the point is that these storytellers have thought about it and have possibilities of what happened, and that’s good enough.

In other words, it was already established that Yoda had two lightsabers, and that there was one with him on Dagobah even after one was presumably destroyed by Sidious. So then The Book of Boba Fett comes along and actually isn’t ignoring canon at all, but is picking up on this thread and running with it. And regardless, the opportunity to introduce Yoda’s lightsaber into this story and potentially give it to Grogu is so cool that it should trump any minor questions about consistency. But even then, the questions about consistency seem to have a reasonable answer.

Personally, I find the most compelling answer being that Yoda already had another lightsaber to begin with, and I say that for a couple of reasons. First, after losing it to Sidious in the Senate and then retreating into exile, I am skeptical that Yoda would have tried to sneak back into the Senate to retrieve his lightsaber. That seems too risky for a guy whose failure is driving him into exile; either he’s going back to get the lightsaber to face off with Sidious again, or he’s leaving it behind. Second, though it’s possible that he decided to build another lightsaber after that time, the Revenge of the Sith deleted scenes show him arriving on Dagobah right away, and I’m skeptical he left the planet. Furthermore, the Age of Rebellion comic makes it seem like Yoda resolved not to use a lightsaber again; it’s one thing if he just kept one around in storage, but another thing if he decided to create a new one. And third, if you combine this with the fact that he’s been around for nine centuries, it becomes basically a given that he would have had numerous lightsabers over time. It all fits.

And it fits really well in this series, which is most important of all. Luke Skywalker retrieved the lightsaber of his master, and is now offering it up to his first pupil, a youngling of Yoda’s own species. It’s like poetry; it rhymes!