I think we can all agree that there’s definitely a need for some kind of wrist protection for lightsabers. Hands get chopped off in the Star Wars universe so often, uber-fans have made up a whole imaginary school of lightsaber combat to try to make sense of it. Not only did Luke Skywalker get his hand cut off by a lightsaber, his dad’s hand was lopped off by a laser blade twice. And heck, check out this clip:

Look at how easily Anakin Skywalker severed both of Count Dooku’s hands in Revenge of the Sith just by running his blade up the shaft. If Dooku had a crossguard on his lightsaber, this never would’ve happened!

So yes, the Star Wars universe needs crossguards. But J.J. Abrams’s particular solution to the problem is making the Internet laugh. Critics say the lightsaber crossguard is more likely to make Driver (or whoever that is) sever his own hand than actually protect him from someone else’s blade. Even if the crossguard did work as intended, it looks silly, these critics argue.

This is the lightsaber of a bloodthirsty young berserker.

I couldn’t disagree more. I’m excited by what this new lightsaber says about J.J. Abrams’s story-driven approach to the Star Wars universe. In fact, if you think it looks silly, I’d argue you’re not looking at it in the right way. This is great design, through and through. Here’s why.

Let me start by making a simple observation: like the design of any similarly iconic weapon from cinema, the most important thing about a lightsaber’s design isn’t whether or not it’s practical to fight with in the real world. It’s what it tells us about the person holding it.

Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox

Consider, for example, the difference between Obi-Wan Kenobi’s blue, single-bladed lightsaber as seen in A New Hope (which conveys that he is a gentleman knight from a more elegant time) and Darth Maul’s red double-bladed lightsaber from The Phantom Menace (which is the weapon of a ferocious and incredibly agile animal who will stop at nothing to draw blood). Neither of these weapons is practical in any real sense of the word, because a laser sword that can effortlessly cut through anything can never be practical: you’d dismember yourself the first time you accidentally tapped yourself with it. But when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Maul fight at the end of The Phantom Menace, it is the fact that they are fighting with these swords in particular that tells us everything we need to know about what is actually at stake: the end of a more civilized and enlightened time, and the beginning of an age of bloodshed, cruelty, and strife.