CURIOSITYThe Star Wars Lightsabers Fans Keep Sleeping On and Shouldn’t5 min read

The Pike, the Darksaber, and One Very Big Question

Extendable lightsaber pikes — long-handled weapons with a shorter blade — show up so rarely in Star Wars that most fans forget they exist. Characters like Senya Tirall use them, and the design is striking: it fights less like a sword and more like a spear, completely changing the geometry of a duel. Given that Rey spent years with a staff before ever touching a lightsaber, it remains a genuine missed opportunity that she was never handed one.

And then there’s the Darksaber. Flat blade, black energy, ancient origins — built by Tarre Viszla, the first Mandalorian Jedi, long before the Skywalker Saga began. It became the symbol of Mandalorian leadership, passed through generations by conquest or bequest, and it looks like nothing else in the galaxy.

Not a Jedi weapon. Not a Sith weapon. A third thing entirely.

The weapons on this list are underrated mostly because Star Wars keeps returning to the same red-versus-blue shorthand. But the franchise’s most interesting design work happens in the margins — the curved hilts, the wooden grips, the crossguards barely containing the energy inside them. Every one of these sabers is a character study. Every one of them earns a longer look.