As Rey finds the Skywalker lightsaber in The Force Awakens, a series of flashback images appears, including a shot of Kylo Ren killing someone and then stepping toward the camera. People wondered what this meant about his possible relationship with Rey, but the movie didn’t explain the sequence, nor did later films in the trilogy.
But now, as we near the tenth anniversary of The Force Awakens, Star Wars has finally explained what was really going on. In the ongoing Kylo Ren comic Legacy of Vader, issue number eight, a flashback tells of that fateful night for the Knights of Ren. Here’s what happened:
After turning to the dark side, Ben Solo joined up with the Knights of Ren, and after going with them for a bit, he killed their leader, Ren, to become the new leader himself: Kylo Ren. As he led the Knights across the galaxy, they took credits, took artifacts, and took lots of lives. It was a time of glory for the Knights, but also a time of immense darkness and slaughter. But as they went on, the Knights started to feel like Kylo – who was distant – was actually following the orders of someone else. It all came to a head during a mission to assassinate an inner rim warlord. Kylo and his men fought through the defenses and killed the target – which is the image from the flashback scene in the movie, of Kylo stabbing a man through the chest.
But at that point, Kylo took a step forward, and the Knights saw who he walked toward: Snoke, flanked by Praetorian guards and stormtroopers. The Knights had a history with Snoke, who had set them up to recruit Ben in the first place. But, as the Knights reflected, “He seemed different that day though. Like everything we’d ever seen him do up to that point was a lie. Like this was the real him. And the real Snoke… was a monster.”
Snoke had arrived to tell Kylo it was time to leave the Knights of Ren behind. That they had served a purpose, as he explored and expanded his power. But they were no longer worth his time. Kylo offered to kill the Knights, but Snoke instead turned his troops on them, causing the Knights of Ren to flee as Kylo Ren left with Snoke.
And that was that. That is why the Knights of Ren weren’t seen with Kylo in The Force Awakens, as he had left them behind. But that is also the explanation for the scene in The Force Awakens. It answers some key questions, like:
- Who was the man killed by Kylo? Despite so many guesses and attempts to deduce it, the answer was really quite simple: it was a random, and seemingly inconsequential, inner rim warlord that the Knights were hired to kill.
- Who was Kylo stepping toward? Though the flashback makes it seem like Rey is the target, that wasn’t the case: it was Snoke. The Supreme Leader had arrived to recruit Kylo.
- Why was this moment included in the flashback? Well, in-universe, I suppose this is a reasonable guess: this was the moment that Kylo was finally and formally joining the First Order. He had been serving Snoke already, but this was when he was called to bigger (and badder) things.
- Where were the Knights of Ren in The Force Awakens? It wasn’t that they were just off on some other mission; it was that Kylo had left them behind, betrayed them, to ally himself with Snoke.
This is what comics like this one have the potential to do so well, filling in some of the gaps that the movies don’t get to. It feels important, tying in to the films, all while telling a compelling story in its own right.
Star Wars Thoughts 