Baylan Skoll carried an orange-red lightsaber with a hilt longer than almost any other in Star Wars.
He built it as a Jedi student under the droid Huyang and kept it through Order 66. He still carried it decades later as a mercenary who had stopped believing in the Order that made him.
He is the first Dark Jedi of the canon era rather than a Sith. He survived the Purge, decided the Jedi were weak and finished, and never bled his crystal red.
The orange blade is not a style choice. It is the visual record of a man who left the light and refused to arrive at the dark.
This page follows the weapon from its construction in the late Republic to the statue on Peridea — how the hilt was built, why the blade is the only color it could be, and what the production team actually said about designing it.
What’s on This Page
- What the Blade Actually Is — the short answer
- Built in the Late Republic: The Student Huyang Remembered
- The Clone Wars and Order 66
- The Mercenary Decades
- The Hilt: Longer, Heavier, and Built to Be Held With Both Hands
- Why the Blade Is Orange, Not Red
- Peridea and the Power He Went Looking For
- How the Saber Was Designed for Screen
- Frequently Asked Questions
What the Blade Actually Is
Baylan Skoll’s lightsaber has an orange-red blade and a hilt noticeably longer than a standard one, built for a two-handed grip rather than the single-handed style most Jedi use.
He wields it in Ahsoka, which premiered in August 2023.
It is a canon weapon, not a Legends one, and it appears across the whole season — first in the teaser trailer, which set off a fan argument about whether the blade was orange or just red under unusual lighting.
He carried this same saber in both of his major duels against Ahsoka Tano, and it was the last thing he still had with him on Peridea.
Built in the Late Republic: The Student Huyang Remembered
Baylan built his lightsaber as a Jedi student in the late Republic era, and the droid Huyang — who helped students construct their sabers for centuries — recognized the design from nothing more than a hologram of the hilt.
Huyang is the architect droid who oversaw Jedi youngling lightsaber construction, a role he had held for far longer than any single Jedi’s lifetime.
When he saw the hologram of Baylan’s hilt, he identified it immediately. In five hundred years, he said, he had known only one student who built a saber like that one.
That line does more work than it looks like it does. It establishes that the hilt is not merely unusual in shape — it is unique enough that a droid with five centuries of records matched it to a single name.
Baylan was trained in the waning days of the Jedi Order, the same generation as Anakin Skywalker, and like Anakin he was a Jedi General by the time the Clone Wars ended.
The Clone Wars and Order 66
Baylan fought the Clone Wars as a Jedi General, survived Order 66, and came out of the Purge convinced that the Jedi had been weak, flawed, and finished — and that Anakin Skywalker was the reason.
Order 66 killed most of his colleagues in a single night, and the man who gave the order had been one of the Order’s own most celebrated Knights.
Baylan’s response was not grief but judgment. He blamed Anakin for the destruction of the Order, and he held onto that blame for decades after the fact.
What he rejected was more specific than the Jedi themselves. He missed the idea of the Order — the structure, the purpose, the community — while dismissing its truth and its restraint as weakness.
That is the distinction that makes him a Dark Jedi rather than a Sith. He never took a Sith name, never joined a Sith order, and never adopted the Sith goal. He simply concluded the Jedi were not worth defending.
When he finally met Ahsoka Tano, he told her he regretted having to fight the few remaining Jedi — and then said he despised her as the legacy of Anakin’s destruction anyway.
The Mercenary Decades
After the Purge, Baylan spent roughly two decades as a mercenary, taking on Shin Hati as an apprentice and training her to be something other than a Jedi.
He lived through the entire reign of the Empire and the Galactic Civil War without joining either side, working as a hired blade instead.
Shin Hati became his apprentice during those years. His stated goal for her was not to make her a Jedi — he wanted her to become something more than that, though the series never spells out what.
By the time of Ahsoka, both were working for Morgan Elsbeth, a Nightsister ally of the Imperial remnant, on a job that had nothing to do with either the Jedi or the Sith: finding the route to the extragalactic world Peridea and freeing Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Baylan’s skill with the saber was enough to be a genuine problem for Ahsoka Tano, a duelist with decades of experience against opponents far more powerful than he was.
He dueled her on Seatos and knocked her off a cliff, and fought her again on Peridea. Both times he came out of it standing.
The Hilt: Longer, Heavier, and Built to Be Held With Both Hands
Baylan’s hilt is much longer than a standard lightsaber and he grips it with both hands, swinging it more like a broadsword than a fencing blade — a length that changes how the weapon actually fights.
Most lightsabers are designed around a single-handed grip, with the off hand used for balance or for a second blade. Baylan’s is not.
The longer handle puts more mass behind the blade and moves the balance point, which is why the VFX team had to adjust animation speeds in his fights. Handled at the same speed as a one-handed saber, the longer blade would have looked weightless.
That same length is why a slower swing still reads as forceful. He does not need to be fast, because the weapon arrives with more behind it than his opponent’s.
Some sources classify the design as a great lightsaber — a longer-bladed type described in Star Wars roleplaying material as using a reinforced hilt and a heavier power emitter to drive a longer blade.
That classification comes from fan reference material rather than from anything stated on screen. At least one wiki lists Baylan’s weapon as a conventional one-handed saber instead. The production team’s own description of it as a long, double-handed weapon is the better-supported account.
| Attribute | Baylan Skoll | Standard Jedi saber |
|---|---|---|
| Blade color | Orange-red / blood orange | Blue or green, most commonly |
| Hilt length | Much longer than standard, two-handed | Single-handed |
| Grip style | Both hands, most of the time | One hand, off hand free |
| Handling | Slower, broadsword-like arc | Fast, fencing-like |
| Built by | Baylan, as a Jedi student, with Huyang | Each Jedi builds their own |
| Crystal | Never bled red | Natural kyber, blue or green |
| Fate of the wielder | Unresolved as of Ahsoka Season 1 | — |
Why the Blade Is Orange, Not Red
The orange blade is deliberate, and it exists to signal that Baylan and Shin are not Sith — they never bled their crystals red, which places them in the gap between the two orders rather than on the dark side of it.
The argument started before the show even aired. The Ahsoka teaser in August 2023 showed Baylan and Shin with blades that looked orange, and fans spent weeks debating whether that was real or just trailer lighting on a red saber.
The series creator settled it. He had made the blades more orange on purpose, he said, and deliberately avoided stark red — he remembered Vader’s blade shifting toward orange in the original films and did not want to go fully orange either.
His explanation for the choice: it identifies something to the audience that the characters might not be exactly what they seem. Nothing, he said, is accidental.
In canon, a red blade comes from bleeding a kyber crystal — dominating it with the dark side until it turns crimson. An orange blade is what that process looks like when it has not been completed.
That reading fits both characters. Baylan and Shin have clearly turned away from the light, but neither has committed to the Sith path, and the color is the visible evidence.
Other explanations circulated as well, including synthetic crystals and rare Kohlen crystals, sometimes called Fool’s Kyber. None of those were confirmed, and the incomplete-bleeding reading is the one the show’s own logic supports.
Orange had appeared in Star Wars before, but never with a settled meaning. In the Legends continuity it showed up on Freedon Nadd, Yaddle, Plo Koon, and Lowbacca. In canon it had been a playable color in Jedi: Fallen Order without any established significance.
Baylan and Shin are the first time the color carried a story.
One Saber, Four Lives
Baylan’s saber was built for a Jedi, carried by a mercenary, and last seen on a planet outside the galaxy. The weapon stayed the same through all four lives — the orange blade is the only part of it that ever changed meaning.
Peridea and the Power He Went Looking For
On Peridea, Baylan felt a power calling to him, became convinced it was connected to the Mortis gods, split from Shin, and was last seen standing on a statue of the Father — still walking toward something he had not yet reached.
Peridea is the extragalactic world the whole season is built around, and Baylan believed it was the ancient Witch Kingdom of the Dathomiri.
What he was actually looking for was not Thrawn, and not the Empire. He wanted a power great enough to break the cycle of light and dark altogether — a goal nothing else in the canon has put in a character’s hands.
He and Shin parted ways there. He sent her to join Thrawn’s Imperial remnant while he went after the thing he had come for.
After Thrawn left Peridea, Baylan was left alone on the planet. The last shot of him is on a statue of the Father, one of the Mortis gods, pointing toward a distant light.
His story is unresolved. The actor who played him died in May 2023, and a replacement was later cast for Ahsoka Season 2.
How the Saber Was Designed for Screen
The hilt began as a design by the art department and was changed at the actor’s request — he asked for a different pommel after seeing the first version, and the change went through the creative leads.
The props team described the process, and the change is one of the few cases in Star Wars where a cast member’s note made it into a weapon’s final design.
The creator’s brief to the VFX team covered both the size and the color. He wanted a much longer, double-handed saber from the very beginning, alongside the more orange blade.
The VFX supervisor said the color was the hardest part of the job. Lightsaber looks have varied across the films and series, and the blade core has to stay as close to white as possible while fading outward into the color.
That combination is what makes an orange blade that still reads as a lightsaber difficult to land.
The length created its own problem. Bouts are animated at a set pace, and a longer blade moving at that pace looks light. The team adjusted speeds in Baylan’s fights so the weapon felt forceful without leaving him looking exposed between swings.
None of that is visible in the finished shots, which is the point. Every one of those decisions is in service of a blade that reads as heavier than everyone else’s, carried by a man who is in no hurry.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What color is Baylan Skoll’s lightsaber?
A: Orange-red, often described as blood orange. It is deliberately not the stark red of a Sith blade, and the difference is what marks him as a Dark Jedi rather than a Sith Lord.
Q2: Why is Baylan Skoll’s lightsaber orange?
A: The series creator chose the color on purpose so the audience would sense that Baylan and Shin are not exactly what they appear to be. In canon terms, an orange blade suggests a kyber crystal whose corruption was never completed, which matches characters who left the light without joining the Sith.
Q3: Is Baylan Skoll a Sith?
A: No. He is a former Jedi who survived Order 66 and became a mercenary. He never took a Sith name, never joined a Sith order, and never bled his crystal red. He is generally described as the first Dark Jedi of the canon era.
Q4: Why is Baylan Skoll’s lightsaber so long?
A: The creator wanted a much longer, double-handed lightsaber to set him apart. Baylan grips it with both hands and swings it more like a broadsword than a fencing blade, which gives his strikes more weight even though they move slower.
Q5: Who built Baylan Skoll’s lightsaber?
A: Baylan built it himself as a Jedi student in the late Republic era, with help from Huyang, the architect droid who oversaw Jedi lightsaber construction. Huyang recognized it from a hologram of the hilt decades later — in five hundred years, he said, he had known only one student who built a saber like it.
Q6: Did Baylan Skoll train Shin Hati?
A: Yes. Shin Hati was his apprentice, and he trained her during his mercenary years. His goal was for her to become something more than a Jedi, though the series never states exactly what. She also wielded an orange-red blade and later joined Thrawn’s Imperial remnant.
Q7: Who changed the design of Baylan Skoll’s lightsaber?
A: The actor who played him. After seeing the initial hilt design from the art department, he asked for a different pommel, and the props team implemented the change along with the creative leads.
Q8: What happened to Baylan Skoll?
A: He survived Ahsoka Season 1. After Thrawn left Peridea, Baylan was left alone on the planet and was last seen on a statue of the Father, one of the Mortis gods, reaching toward a distant light. His story is unresolved — a replacement was cast for Season 2 after the original actor’s death in May 2023.
Q9: Was the orange lightsaber just a trailer lighting error?
A: No. When the Ahsoka teaser trailer appeared in August 2023, fans argued over whether the blades were truly orange or a red saber under unusual lighting. The series creator confirmed the color was intentional and that he had deliberately avoided making them stark red.