There was a massive coordinated effort around the marketing for Star Wars: The Force Awakens to keep the new bearer of that famous blue Skywalker lightsaber a secret. In the trailers and on the poster, it was John Boyega’s Finn, not Daisy Ridley’s Rey, wielding the Skywalker family heirloom. That bait-and-switch meant that Episode VII audiences could feel the full impact of the pivotal moment when the blue-bladed weapon flew into her hand.

What a difference two years make. By the end of The Force Awakens, Rey looked eager to unload the blue lightsaber on Luke, but, judging by an early Last Jedi poster and this stunning portrait shot by Annie Leibovitz for the Vanity Fair Summer issue, Rey’s connection to Anakin Skywalker’s weapon is far from over. Lucasfilm Story Group creative executive Pablo Hidalgo talks about the weapon’s loaded past and its future with Rey.

As far as we know in Star Wars lore, there are two Skywalker lightsabers. There’s the blue one Anakin built for himself somewhere between giving his opinions on sand in Episode II and massacring a group of younglings in Episode III. After Anakin loses that blade—and most of his appendages—in a fight, Obi-Wan Kenobi plucks the weapon from the lava sand beach and holds on to it for as long as it takes for Ewan McGregor to turn into Alec Guinness. He then gives the blue blade to Luke, who uses it until he loses it—along with just one appendage—during The Empire Strikes Back.

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But while the blue weapon that once belonged to Anakin meant a good deal to Luke, the blade that can truly be called “Luke’s lightsaber,” according to Lucasfilm, is the one he builds himself in a cut scene from Return of the Jedi. The green weapon impresses Vader—lightsabers are much harder to come by after the Jedi are wiped out—who acknowledges that Luke is, in Hidalgo’s words, “not a pretender to this legacy.” Hidalgo explains that Luke’s blade was also originally blue—in the first Return of the Jedi trailer and poster—but was changed to green for a very practical reason.

“The intent was the lightsaber was going to be blue,” Hidalgo explains of the story that has passed into Star Wars lore. “In that universe, at that time, as far as anyone knew, lightsabers were red or they were blue.” But Luke’s weapon was changed to green so it would stand out against the bright blue sky and yellow sand, in scenes such as the Jedi’s daring rescue of Han, Leia, and the rest. “As much as we like to mythologize why it’s green and what that all signifies,” Hidalgo explains, “sometimes there are very pragmatic filmmaking reasons behind these things.”