Jfo - Blog Posts

Cal Kestis’s Lightsaber

Cal’s lightsaber is cool. I know the reason for the stances is because video game, but character and story-wise it makes sense too.

The different stances give Cal increased adaptability for different situations. It plays into the whole “Survivors. We adapt.”message.

It also shows Cal’s natural combat prowess. No one taught him to wield these other stances, he figured it out on his own, building on a strong foundation from Jaro Tapal.

It’s also a great reminder of his scrapper days. Light sabers are notoriously difficult to build and modify, and for Cal to build such a complex weapon, it is clear how much Prauf taught him on Bracca.

Finally, I love what the double bladed saber represents for Cal. He builds it on Ilum after overcoming a moment of hopelessness. He takes the broken crystal and uses it to make a double bladed saber that can split apart. He adapts.

A lot of people comment that his double bladed stance feels really powerful compared to others, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s on purpose. Story-wise it makes the most sense for it to be the one he favors. Yes, he usually defaults to a standard saber in cut scenes but that’s the one he was trained on. He’s also had the double sided saber since the first game, meaning he’s had five years of training with it. He’s had the split sabers too, but he used them as a special attack within the double sided saber stance.

As much as I love Jedi Survivor, I don’t think the studio understands how crossguard sabers work. I understand having it be a heavy two-handed weapon because video game, but crossguard sabers aren’t from a custom emitter. When you bleed a crystal wrong you need vents to emit the excess energy. It’s nothing game breaking but I think it’s funny.

I’m sure that I am not the first one to come up with this headcanon, but I like to think that Cal changes his lightsaber color from its canonical blue to green after starting something with Merrin so he can match her magick. Because Cal is dorky like that.

Also, the lightsaber he uses technically isn’t his. It belonged to Jaro Tapal.

Anyway, thanks for my too-long meta analysis of me reading too deeply into things that probably only exist because of video game mechanics!

The Jedi Fallen Order recap is like:

Trilla: We seek a dangerous fugitive.

Then it hard cuts to a cute ginger with shaggy hair, freckles, and a poncho who has a little smile, a droid best friend, and who gave their lightsaber to a nightsister who was threatening him five minutes earlier.

I loved the left image Cameron posted on his Instagram. It reminded me so much of Jedi Survivor's photo mode that I just *had* to try and recreate it using in game mechanics only.

I did a lot of hunting to try and find places to get the red lighting close. Had some friends pick the ones I did they thought were closest.

So happy with how it came out... Cal style.

Here's Cam 🪞 Cal

Left photo credit : Cameron Monaghan's instagram