The season finale of Lucasfilm’s series Star Wars: The Acolyte on Disney+ contained a moment that may have been confusing to some viewers, as it depicted an act from the larger Star Wars lore that had not yet appeared in live-action before– namely the “bleeding” of a Kyber crystal. Let’s talk about where this came from!
While a 2011 Legends novel entitled Star Wars: Riptide established that Force users like the Jedi could “cleanse” or heal a Kyber crystal from red to light-side color such as blue, green, or yellow, the concept of bleeding crystals (essentially corrupting them to the dark side by channeling one’s negative emotions into them via physical touch) to red from one of those colors did not appear until the 2016 current-canon Star Wars: Ahsoka novel by E.K. Johnston.
In that book, former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano tells Senator Bail Organa about the bleeding and purification process after she kills the Sith Inquisitor known as the Sixth Brother and takes his Kyber crystals. In the 2017 Marvel Comics series Star Wars: Darth Vader (Vol. 2) we also see the Dark Lord of the Sith himself hunt down and murder Jedi Master Kirak Infil'a– who had avoided the fate of Order 66 and the Jedi Purge because he had taken the Barash Vow– stealing his lightsaber and bleeding the crystal on Mustafar to become the one he uses throughout the original Star Wars trilogy.
We’ve also seen the character of Dagan Gara bleed a Kyber crystal in the 2023 video game Star Wars: Jedi – Survivor, and Ben Solo did it with his own Kyber crystal in the 2019 Star Wars: the Rise of Kylo Ren comic-book miniseries. During that particular instance, the crystal actually cracked, which is what gives Kylo’s crossguard lightsaber its uniquely unstable energy output.
In The Acolyte, Mae throws Master Sol’s lightsaber to the ground, where the casing breaks open, exposing the blue Kyber crystal inside. And then when Osha later picks up the saber, her hand is in direct contact with the crystal, so after she kills Sol using the Force-choke ability, her dark-side Force power funnels directly into the Kyber, turning both the crystal and the blade it outputs through the lightsaber’s emitter a bright red. As a fan of the ancillary Star Wars materials who is always excited when something from the publishing side of the universe makes its way into live-action, I was pretty psyched to see Kyber-crystal bleeding happen in real-time right before my eyes.
The full season of Star Wars: The Acolyte is available to stream exclusively via Disney+.