Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker VFX supervisor answers a big question about Episode 9's ending

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker left fans of the franchise with a great many questions – questions we've tried hard to answer. One of those included why Rey was seen holding a yellow lightsaber at the very end of the movie. Thanks to the movie's visual effects supervisor, we now have an answer.

"A fair number of colours have been used in lightsabers. So there was a design challenge there in terms of what colour it should be," Roger Guyett told Insider when asked about what direction they were given. Confirming that the blade is indeed yellow, and not gold, Guyett added: "There was an optimistic kind of quality to that, but we also wanted [Rey] to have a very unique colour. We ran some tests and decided in the end what colour it would be."

Guyett, and the rest of the VFX team interviewed, all used the word "optimism" when talking about the colour. We had speculated that Rey may have used the Kyber crystal – the object that's used to form a lightsaber's blade – from Kylo Ren's blade, along with another Jedi's crystal, in the making of the new blade. This seems to not be the case, as the decision was seemingly mainly for aesthetic purposes.

However, there was one very purposeful design choice made in relation to Rey's past: the new lightsaber's hilt is built from her original staff.

"That was the concept," said Guyett. "The art production design and the art department, we all contribute to the designs of various things... [director] J.J. [Abrams] just thought it was logical that she had the staff, and, therefore, the sabre should somehow be linked to that."

Another question recently answered about The Rise of Skywalker concerned how the Emperor returned in Episode 9 after seemingly dying in Return of the Jedi. The official companion book to The Rise of Skywalker implied the Sith Eternal helped save him – read more about the Emperor's return here.

Fancy rewatching the Star Wars movies? Here's how to watch the Star Wars movies in order, and here's the Star Wars timeline in chronological order.

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.