With The Rise of Kylo Ren, we finally get some more back story behind the tale that Luke Skywalker and Ben Solo told in Force Awakens and how Ben Solo became Kylo Ren.
This will contain spoilers (to both the comic and The Rise of Skywalker) so if you haven’t read the comic yet and don’t want it spoiled, you may want to stop here.
The comic was written by Charles Soule with Will Sliney doing the art of the comic. Soule, known primarily for his Marvel Comics runs, has done several different Star Wars series’ such as Star Wars: Lando, Poe Dameron, Darth Vador – Dark Lord of the Sith, among other Star Wars comics. For Sliney, he has done a ton of different Spider-Man comics, other Marvel comics, and now Kylo Ren, but he has worked on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars com as well as Solo comics as well. This was a great team up of these two so far. The art is engaging and Sliney’s capture of Ben’s emotions on his face and with his body positions really brings you more into Ben’s story as well as Soule’s story, which we’re about to talk about.
Now, why am I reviewing comics? I recently, as I have said in previous blog posts, have gotten into the Star Wars comics. As someone who loves the Star Wars universe, I realized I was missing out on so many great stories written by some amazing authors, just because they were in comic form. As you know, I’m a huge Star Wars fan and, though I’m primarily a book reviewer, getting to change it up sometimes and look at the visual representations of the comics is great. If you’re even remotely a visual person, I cannot recommend the comics as additional reading enough.
The brief overview for this comic story-arc, as we’ll see in additional issues later on, is to follow and show us how Ben Solo became Kylo Ren and came to work with (former) Supreme Leader Snoke. This is a timeline in the Star Wars Universe that we have yet to explore in this comic. We may have seen from other character’s points-of-view in their own comics but this is the first time we get any glimpses into the Knights of Ren as well as Ben Solo before The Force Awakens.
The comic starts with a time period that we are unsure of, just “Long Ago” as the disclaimer, as we see the Knights of Ren and their leader, Ren, trying to recruit a force-sensitive young man during what appears to be a battle on an ice world. We are unsure of where they are but we can definitely see they not only want force sensitive people but they want those who already have a tendency for the dark side. They end up with no one knew as the young man they are recruiting is there with his brother and the brother without force capabilities kills the other brother thinking this is his way out but, without the powers, they are uninterested in him.
Then we jump to right after the Jedi Temple of Luke Skywalker catches on fire/is destroyed by (what we perceive to be) Ben Solo after his Uncle, Luke, simultaneously thinks he needs to stop/kill his nephew, and then also realizes what a horrible decision that would be, but he does so too late, while standing over his sleeping nephew who wakes up at the wrong time. The rest of the comic not only shows what happens directly after but we do see a flash back to just before the comic to what Ben was thinking and seeing the influence of Snoke over his decisions. We follow, not only Ben on his quest to leave but we also see his interactions with former Jedi Padawans of Luke who are trying to stop him/trying to figure out what has happened to the temple and why Luke would try to kill Ben. They realize that these actions don’t sound like the Luke they know as their master and try to piece it all together while trying to figure out where Ben is going, after Ben leaves finally after a brief altercation between the three padawans (Hennix, a male Quarren from Mon Cala, Tai, a male Padawan, and Voe, a female Palawan) and Ben when they try to stop him.
This whole comic leads to Ben going to Snoke, before he is Supreme Leader and before how we see him in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. This interaction is pivotal in understanding how a child of Princess/Senator Leia Organa Solo and her husband, Han Solo, could turn to the dark side and follow someone we see as evil as Snoke.
Now, it being after The Rise of Skywalker that came out this past December, we know who was controlling Snoke/who made him, but the main point I want to talk about is how sympathetic Snoke is and the kind of influence he may have had, not only over Ben but also Luke Skywalker. You see, from further in the comic we learn that Luke and Snoke have faced off before, leading to Snoke’s broken/hurt appearance. I’m hopeful that later on in the comic series we will see where this goes as far as how this interaction happened but, for now, we just know that it did. However, in little bubbles that appear occasionally during Ben’s story and focal point, we see that Snoke has influenced him, is “talking” to him through the Force. Honestly, someone else may have talked about this angle before but I wanted to touch on how, even though Luke may have not known it, but Snoke’s influence may have even touched Luke and made Luke doubt and think what he did when it came to “killing” or even the possibility of it, his nephew.
For what we know of Luke throughout the Original Trilogy we know him to be strong with the Force and was able to withstand his father, Darth Vader and his pull to the dark side. However, we really haven’t seen Darth Sidious (or Emperor Palpatine) try to influence Luke through the force. We do know, or assume, that Palpatine remained a much stronger Sith than Vader so who’s to say that Luke’s very doubt that causes the dissension between himself and his own nephew, wasn’t just Luke being pulled to the dark side through Palpatine. Obviously, I didn’t mention earlier but Palpatine basically was Snoke, or at least influenced him and created him. I warned you there would be spoilers. We see Snoke very specifically saying to Ben that Luke “feared” him, and what do we know about fear, Master Yoda? “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” This fear is obviously the influence of the dark side and if Snoke/Palpatine can influence and talk through the force to Ben Solo, and eventually connect to Rey, why can’t he have some Force pull on Luke Skywalker, causing Luke’s fear to reign supreme and eventually lead him toward seclusion? Snoke wants, no needs, Ben Solo. He’s the sole heir to the Skywalker family, strong in the Force, and what better of a win for Palpatine than to finally get a descendant of Vader, a Skywalker, on his side yet again. Though, we didn’t know Palpatine was the puppeteer, knowing what we know now, it truly makes sense that he would try to stick it to Luke yet again by stealing away, not only his prized pupil, but his own family.
Now, we still have three more issues of this comic line to review after this one, so I’m excited to see where it goes. We do already know the end-game of this series and where Ben ends up but seeing how he got there, how this vulnerable young man becomes the hot-headed bad guy that we come to know in the first two-and-a-half sequel trilogy movies is the fun of this comic. I haven’t mentioned before but, similar to my eventual love of Professor Snape in Harry Potter once you finally read The Deathly Hallows and see where his character has stood all along, I fell in love with Ben Solo from the moment we see him speak to his father in his own head halfway through The Rise of Skywalker and then see him run exactly like his father, holding a blaster, like he did in A New Hope. I can’t wait to see how much more character development he has, and get so many of my questions answered about Snoke as well as his potential influence over Luke Skywalker and the Force.
Bookish and Bliss 