All right, let’s settle this: Could Sabine have survived that lightsaber wound or not?

04.10.2023 - 16:35 / polygon.com / Sabine Wren / Morgan Elsbeth

[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for the end of season 1 of Ahsoka.]

If you’re up to date on Ahsoka, you’ll know that the Disney Plus show’s season 1 finale boasts a lot of lightsaber action. Sabine (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson), and Ezra (Eman Esfandi) fight a whole lot of zombified Night Troopers and a magic sword-wielding Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto). Somewhat predictably, the former prove impressively resilient to being sliced and diced — zombies are tricky, after all — however, the slash to the chest sustained by the latter during her climactic duel with Ahsoka ultimately proves fatal. Which is, frankly, a relief, as the Star Wars franchise could really do without any further laser-sword-related controversies.

See, there’s been quite a bit of harumphing among fans of Lucasfilm’s galaxy far, far away that the saga’s most iconic weapon has lost its edge (literally). Over the past 46 years, Star Warsmedia has taken great pains to establish that coming up against an opponent armed with a lightsaber is serious business. A well-placed cleave could cost you one or more limbs (if not your head), while a thrust to your torso meant game over entirely. This logic held across the franchise’s pre- and post-Disney eras — until the House of Mouse started making live-action Star WarsTV shows, that is.

2022 miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobistarted the recent small-screen trend of nonlethal lightsabers by having not one but two characters survive seemingly fatal stab wounds. Ahsoka continued this trend, with Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) already back on her feet in episode 2 after being run through by Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno) in episode 1. Predictably, the internet immediately declared that Sabine’s survival and recovery were dubious — by the standards of both real-world and Star Wars medical science. But are the naysayers right? Polygon went to an actual trauma expert to find out.

Our expert is Dr. Owen McCabe, an MD board-certified in general surgery and surgical critical care. He’s a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and is currently a trauma and acute care surgeon. He works for District Medical Group and staffs Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. Aside from that, he’s a professor of surgery at Creighton University and the associate program director for the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship. Crucially, McCabe also considers himself a Star Warsfan (although he admits to dropping off a bit after the prequels), and he dialed into our call having done “prep work,” which we took to mean “spent several hours on Wookieepedia.”

We got straight to the point (pun fully intended) in our conversation with McCabe, opening with the most obvious question: What damage