How would the Darksaber deflect blaster fire?

Question

Although briefly possessed on screen by two Force wielders (Maul and Kanan Jarrus), I don't recall ever seeing the Darksaber being used in the way we've often seen lightsabers used in Star Wars, to deflect blaster fire. Presumably it's original creator, Tar Visla, who was a Jedi, could have used it for this purpose.

But, given that every other lightsaber is shown to have a blade that is cylindrical and the Darksaber has a distinctly flat blade, more akin to an Earthly sabre, do we have any canon or legends idea how it would deflect a blaster bolt? Could it accurately redirect blaster fire back at the shooter? And would that deflection actually be different if the edge or the flat of the blade was used?

Answer 1

Yes, like any other normal lightsabre the darksabre can too deflect blaster fire, given that its wielder is capable and powerful enough to do so. we saw maul deflecting a blaster bolt with the darksabre in a legends comic. I hope this answers your question - here(its the star wars fandom page).

Further there's a subreddit dedicated to this topic if you want to know more - reddit/darksabre

Answer 2

From what I’ve seen in various parts of Star Wars, there is one big reason as to why you don’t see the Darksaber deflecting blaster bolts. It boils down to the fact there are very few force-sensitive wielders, thus few people have the precognition/reaction time to do so. Additionally, Kanan Jarrus would be used to his lightsaber, so there would be no reason to use it to defend him a self. As for Maul, he doesn’t actually use it much as well. He gets it in clone wars, but by season 7, he’s already back to a new saberstaff.

My guess as to how it would deflect laser bolts (not cannon or legends, just a guess) would be that since with a normal blade, they seem to reflect at around 90 degrees. My guess would say that it would be the same if the cutting edge or the back edge of the Darksaber caught the bolt. If it caught it along the side, it would probably be a very close angle or it would dissipate the bolt due to the bolt of Tibanna gas interrupting the flow of the bolt. Essentially, you would have Tibanna going one way at a high velocity and Tibanna going the opposite way at the same velocity. Apply Newtonian physics and the gas will lose motion and dissipate (I think).