The Mandalorian showcased how exciting it can be when a lightsaber blade and a beskar blade meet in a fight, but The Rise of Skywalker missed a similar opportunity to capitalize on a confrontation between the Jedi weapon and a Mandalorian armament in its climax. Fundamentally, JJ Abrams' sequel set up a confrontation involving Kylo Ren and a former fellow Knights of Ren warrior wielding a Mandalorian executioner's ax with a beskar blade and failed to capitalize on the billing.
In The Mandalorian season 2, episode 5, “The Jedi,” Ahsoka Tano duels using her dual lightsabers against Magistrate Morgan Elsbeth and her beskar spear, and while Ahsoka is ultimately victorious, it is not an easy battle. Following that, in episode 8, “The Rescue,” Moff Gideon uses the Darksaber in a duel with Din Djarin himself, who by then wields the beskar spear, and this time the wielder of the spear wins the battle. Although the Darksaber is of Mandalorian construction, it’s built in such a way as to be functionally identical to a lightsaber, so both duels can be categorized as lightsaber versus beskar.
Lightsabers have cut through almost everything in the Star Wars Universe, so it was eye-opening to see a Jedi’s blades compete with a metal spear, albeit one made of beskar. Given that, it’s surprising that The Rise of Skywalker couldn’t make more of the movie’s conflict between Ben Solo and the Knights of Ren, since one of their members, Ap’lek carried the beskar-bladed executioner's ax. Unfortunately, neither Ap’lek’s signature smoke-screen usage nor his scavenged weapon of choice factor significantly in his encounter with his former leader, and it is, ultimately, a disappointment that The Mandalorian's duel sequences makes all the more pronounced.
By the time he comes face-to-face with the Knights, Kylo has discarded his original lightsaber and mask and converted to the light side for the final confrontation under his original name, Ben Solo. Although the Knights of Ren initially have the upper hand and Ap’lek’s Mandalorian ax lands a glancing blow against Solo’s lightsaber, Ap’lek quickly receives the “through and through” treatment to the chest and falls to his death. In a startlingly disjointed sequence that fails to live up to the Knights' mythology, he and the other five Knights of Ren are defeated within just ninety seconds, and Solo then joins Rey to face off against Sidious in the finale. The narrative decision here is clearly to elevate Kylo Ren by showing that while beskar might be one of the few materials evenly matched in terms of strength with a lightsaber’s blade, lengthy Jedi training and a more nimble weapon are more than a match for a heavy executioner’s ax, no matter the origin.
To be fair, The Rise of Skywalker had a lot of heavy lifting to do, to wrap up all of the disparate story threads in the sequels, and the third part of all three of the Star Wars trilogies suffer from this need to draw everything to a conclusion. The minimal role of The Knights of Ren in this film finale is particularly jarring, after they received significant attention and build-up in the earlier films and associated media. Ultimately, Ap’lek’s “blink and you missed it” termination ignoring the potential of his weapon is but one more item in the litany of shortcomings that attracted so much criticism to The Rise of Skywalker. That said, the sequel clocked in at 142 minutes and extending the Knights of Ren battle sequence would have had to have come at a cost elsewhere.