The New Yorker has a massive in-depth profile on Apple’s Jonathan Ive, the iconically soft-spoken (and oddly swole) chief designer behind much of Apple’s equally iconic modern product line. Ive is responsible for devices like the iMac and the iPhone, and the entire profile is an engaging read since author Ian Parker was given unprecedented access to the closed world of Apple’s design workshops. But there’s a fascinating tidbit buried about halfway though the piece that sheds some, ahem, light on a specific aspect of last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer.

Since the trailer’s release back in November, Star Wars fans have filled entire message boards debating the usefulness (or dumbness) of the crossguards on the lightsaber featured in the trailer—even Stephen Colbert weighed in with his opinions. But while the weapon’s mini-lightsaber-crossguards received the lion’s share of the attention, the actual texture of the blade also attracted notice. Rather than the visually smooth surface that past on-screen lightsabers have had, the one in the trailer is…a bit flickery.

There are lots of fan theories as to why this might be. Per the off-screen extended universe lore (which may or may not matter anymore), lightsabers contain one or more exotic crystals to focus their energy into a coherent, contained blade; different types of crystals yield different blade colors and properties. Perhaps the hooded figure in the trailer is using rough or raw crystals, or perhaps he hasn’t mastered the precise art of lightsaber construction?

Whatever the in-universe reason, the real reason for the flickering blade is because Apple’s Jony Ive thought it would look cool. From The New Yorker’s piece:

And Ive once sat next to J. J. Abrams at a boozy dinner party in New York, and made what Abrams recalled as “very specific” suggestions about the design of lightsabres. Abrams told me that Star Wars: The Force Awakens would reflect those thoughts, but he wouldn’t say how. After the release of the film’s first trailer—which featured a fiery new lightsabre, with a cross guard, and a resemblance to a burning crucifix—I asked Ive about his contribution. “It was just a conversation,” he said, then explained that, although he’d said nothing about cross guards, he had made a case for unevenness: “I thought it would be interesting if it were less precise, and just a little bit more spitty.” A redesigned weapon could be “more analog and more primitive, and I think, in that way, somehow more ominous.”

So, there you have it—Apple’s and Ive’s design influence extends even into a galaxy far, far away. Whether this gives anyone further reason to like or dislike Apple is up to the reader.