Dave Filoni Explains The 'Star Wars Rebels' Ezra Lightsaber/Blaster Hybrid

Just when everyone was busy talking or bitching about Kylo Ren's lightsaber in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the Star Wars Rebels team jumped on board with a strange design of their own. They introduced Ezra's lightsaber, which looks like a staple gun and combines a blaster with a lightsaber. Because it wasn't in theaters, this unique new Star Wars weapon didn't creator the fervor of its cross-guarded counterpart, but it was still a radical departure from what Star Wars fans expect from the series' elegant weapons.

At Star Wars Celebration, we spoke with Rebels producer Dave Filoni and since he wasn't giving up many details on season 2, we asked about Ezra's saber. Where did the idea come from? How was it designed? What was the purpose and was it hard getting it approved by the Lucasfilm Story Group? Read everything Filoni had to say about the Ezra lightsaber below.

Here's an excerpt from our Dave Filoni interview. We'll post more, along with the full transcript, soon.As a Star Wars fan one of the things that really threw me for a loop last season was the Ezra lightsaber, which is both a blaster and a lightsaber. What were the logistics of actually making that happen?

The lightsaber itself as it exists is perfect. There'd be no reason to change it. So Kanan has a kind of classic lightsaber. For me, when challenged with looking at a character like Ezra I thought, 'There's no way I can believe this kid can fight one to one with any sort of real character we're gonna have.' You know, he's gonna get his butt kicked. So we had him build into his functioning saber. 'What if it was like a revolver saber where it could actually fire a bit' And that way he can keep people at range and only saber fight as the last resort.

And for [art director] Kilian Plunkett and I, we try to limit ourselves and say, 'If we only had the devices to make a saber as they did in the '70s as a prop, let's go down to the hardware store and see how we would build this thing.' And we instantly started looking at nail guns and staple guns. If you look at a silhouette, it reminds you of those things and we kind of fashioned it [that way]. And what I like is that it looks like something that's from the era of the original trilogy in its shape. That 'It's a lightsaber' is a bit surprising more than 'It fires as a blaster' is a bit surprising. I think it's a function that, as Ezra gets better, would go away. But for now it's something he actually needs to survive.

Was it something that was hard to get by the story group? 'Cause it is so different from everything else we've seen.

No, I don't think so. I mean, everybody seemed to be in favor of it. Any time you change something like a lightsaber, obviously it's a flash button. You know, you put a little guard on the lightsaber and suddenly it goes nuts for a while. But in a way that's good 'cause it means it's new. It means you hadn't thought of it and it challenges you. And as I've said before, we have to keep challenging the Star Wars viewer not just keep doing what we've always done. But add new and interesting twists of things. Even like lightsabers.

We'll have more from Filoni and fellow producer Simon Kinberg on Star Wars Rebels soon.