A new Star Wars book has once again confirmed that Force Lightning strictly belongs to the dark side, even though Rey inadvertently accessed the ability in the last movie of the Skywalker Saga.
We first saw the power in action in the climactic sequence of Return of the Jedi, where the Emperor unleashed a chain of lightning to incapacitate a defiant Luke Skywalker. The point was to show the evil antagonist’s terrifying strength, despite his feeble physical prowess. Barring the many Expanded Universe novels and storylines (now deemed non-canon by Disney) that featured similar strange dark side powers, the next time we saw Force Lightning in the saga was Episode II – Attack of the Clones via Darth Tyrannus aka Count Dooku. And who could forget Palpatine’s “unlimited power” moment in Revenge of the Sith?
Taking all of these instances into account, it’s safe to assume that the only people who can channel lightning are dark side practitioners. But apparently, it has more to do with what you feel inside rather than a learnable skill since Rey also accidentally used it in Episode IX in a sort of Force-clash with Kylo Ren.
Now, the newly released reference source, The Star Wars Book, has confirmed that only the Sith should be able to access this destructive ability. A passage dedicated to these dark side warriors reads as follows:
“The Sith’s focus on the dark opens up powers that a Jedi dare not wield, such as the ability to corrupt the Force through focused rage to launching deadly lightning from their fingertips.”
Of course, as Star Wars fans will probably tell you, the Jedi also have powers that are unique to them, like Force Healing. Even Rey manages to utilize her extraordinary powers to save the life of a giant creature in The Rise of Skywalker‘s first act and heal Kylo Ren’s fatal lightsaber wound in the second.
In a sense, then, the story aims to show the protagonist in a conflict between the light side and the dark, which could probably explain why she was able to channel Force lightning in that particular scene on the planet Pasaana as well.