WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the series premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, "Aftermath," now streaming on Disney+.
With the premiere of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, fans were taken back to the fateful day that the Jedi were all but eradicated during Order 66. But rather than see a new Jedi endure the event, Master Depa Billaba and her apprentice Caleb Dume, aka Kanan Jarrus, were put in the crosshairs. However, this retelling of the Jedi's fates was changed from their initial introduction in the pages of Greg Weisman and Pepe Larraz's comic Kanan: The Last Padawan. Most conspicuously, Master Billaba's lightsaber color was altered from green to blue. However, this change was actually introduced even earlier than The Bad Batch premiere.
In 2020, Star Wars The Lightsaber Collection quietly changed Billaba's lightsaber color from her standard green to blue. This was based on designs from Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where she carried a blue blade, and the book included text confirming the color. The written and visual declaration has left no room for confusion in the future, as shown in The Bad Batch. But Billaba's color change also speaks to the larger saber color conundrum the character has gone through over the years.
Depa Billaba's time in the prequel films wasn't covered as much as other Jedi like Kit Fisto or Mace Windu. She first appeared in The Phantom Menace and was next seen in stock footage for Attack of the Clones. Following the films, her next appearance came in the final season of The Clone Wars, where she appeared in a hologram. Since these appearances never showed her with a lightsaber, written media became the best way to explore her use of the Jedi weapon.
Before the franchise was separated into canon and Legends, early comics depicted Billaba with a pink lightsaber. While canon later adopted the idea of having multiple colors for kyber crystals, as shown in games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Billaba's pink blade didn't survive the transition into canon. Her next blade color was featured in Matthew Stover's 2003 novel, Star Wars: Shatterpoint. From that point onward, the Jedi Master's blade was depicted as green. The color stuck with the character and was put on full display in the Kanan comic series in the years following.
In the comic, the blade was used to kill clone troopers following Order 66, where, unlike in The Bad Batch, Billaba had to defend herself along with her Padawan, Caleb Dume, in the dead of night. Her green blade appeared again in issue #25 of Charles Soule and Giuseppe Camuncolli's Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith. During the issue, she appeared as a Force vision to Vader while on Mustafar, along with other Jedi of the Republic, all brandishing their blades against him. In the end, he slew them all, and with her demise in the issue, her green blade was also put to rest.
Depa Billaba's color change and overall retcon of her death have appeared to be a way to make sure that the initial idea fit in with the overall narrative. As such, major moments surrounding her death were still maintained, including her final words to Caleb being "Run!" and his subsequent distrust of Clones after Crosshair's consistent attempts to kill him. With The Lightsaber Collection changing the character's saber color a whole year earlier than the premiere, maintaining the established canon was still a priority, and her return in Star Wars: The Bad Batch was the perfect way to finally set the record straight.
Created by Dave Filoni, Star Wars: The Bad Batch stars Dee Bradley Baker and Ming-Na Wen. The series premieres May 4 on Disney+.