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A friend of mine recently has been arguing that the term "The Light Side" is not a term that exists in the Star Wars universe, and that they simply use "Jedi" instead.

The best reference I can find is in Episode VII, Han Solo says: "A magical power holding together good and evil... the dark side and the light"

Is there anywhere in Canon that directly says "The Light Side"?

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    Woah... uh, the scripts for Episode 1 - 7 don't actually contain the string "light side" anywhere. May 6, 2016 at 1:12
  • @GGMG So, it's just "the dark side" and not-the-dark-side?
    – Adeptus
    May 6, 2016 at 1:21
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    I think the idea is that there's "The Force," then the force corrupted. Dark is the absence of light, so to speak. I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert here, I'm just really surprised nobody's called it the light side in the movies. Just filing it away with "Beam me up, Scotty!" and "Do you feel lucky, punk?" May 6, 2016 at 1:25
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    Related: There's a 'Light Side'? Star Wars used to just have 'The Force' and 'The Dark Side': "the term "Light Side" existed in novelizations and other canon material, where it was also called "Ashla" (its name from early drafts of George Lucas' original Star Wars script)." Sorry, I don't have specific canon quotes to back it up. May 6, 2016 at 2:58
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    Possible duplicate of Is it the Good side or the Light side?
    – RedCaio
    May 6, 2016 at 21:30

4 Answers 4

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I don't know how much weight to give this, but the narrator directly refers to "the light side" in the opening of Season 3 Episode 16 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Later they discover three beings, more powerful with the force than any jedi have seen before. The father keeps a fragile balance between his daughter, who allies with the light side, and the son, who drifts ever closer to the dark.

- source

(There's gotta be a better repository of Clone Wars scripts than that, but it's what Google turned up as the first result)

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  • Thank you for the edit, @RedCaio. I'll try to format better in the future.
    – Paul L
    May 9, 2016 at 12:17
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From The Force Awakens:

Han Solo: I used to wonder about that myself. Thought it was a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. A magical power holding together good and evil... the dark side and the light. Crazy thing is... it's true. The Force. The Jedi. All of it. It's all true.

and

Snoke: The dark side, and the light.

Going by the films alone, depending on how you interpret these sentences, the correct term is either "the light side" or just "the light." "Jedi" is not the right term, as there are good Force-users who aren't Jedi, such as Ahsoka.

However, the official Star Wars Twitter account has used the term "Light Side" multiple times.

*Star Wars* Twitter

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The term appears in the new (canon) novelisation of Star Wars: A New Hope.

As he switched the welder off again, Han heard Luke ask, “What do you mean?” “There are two sides of the Force,” Ben continued. “The light side of the Force, the way of the Jedi, aligns with selflessness, enlightenment, mercy, and compassion. The dark side, the way of the Sith, deals in hatred, fear, anger, jealousy. You must learn to control your emotions, otherwise they will control you.”
Ha! Han thought. Easier said than done. Wasn’t the mix of all that what made them humans?
“Why do some go to the dark side?” he heard Luke ask. “If they know that it brings destruction and pain, what’s the draw?”
“Everyone has their own destinies,” the old man said. “The Force works in mysterious ways, but it leads us to where we need to be in order to achieve balance. Many Sith believe that the dark side holds more power, but that is simply not true.”

A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy

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At least in the UK, you can get a The Force Awakens Blu-Ray with a "Choose the Lightside" sleeve. Note that there does not appear to be a space in Lightside here.

Light side sleeve

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