Kylo Ren

• 1. Introduction

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  Kylo Ren is, in the words of Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw, "gorgeously cruel, spiteful and capricious." He is, Bradshaw added, a Star Wars villain given to "petulant temper tantrums, with his lightsaber drawn." Long before he earned that description, he was named Ben Solo, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. Ben trained as a Jedi under his uncle, Luke Skywalker, before Snoke, the Supreme Leader of the First Order, pulled him to the dark side. He took the name Kylo Ren and set his sights on matching his grandfather, the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Adam Driver played him across all three sequel trilogy films. He appeared in The Force Awakens in 2015, The Last Jedi in 2017, and The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. Ren also turned up in the animated series Star Wars Resistance, between 2018 and 2020. He appeared again in two Lego Star Wars television specials, in 2020 and 2021. As the First Order's chief enforcer and the leader of the Knights of Ren, he became the Resistance scavenger Rey's fiercest adversary. What could turn a trained Jedi into the family's own executioner? And how does a character built to echo Darth Vader end up called something other than simply evil?

• 2. Concept And Creation

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  As late as March 2014, Lucasfilm's production team still called the character only "Jedi Killer." Numerous design attempts had been rejected by then, though one resurfaced later for Captain Phasma and others were reused for the Knights of Ren. That same month, costume designer Glyn Dillon's design was finally approved. Director J. J. Abrams wanted the mask to be memorable to a child. He later said the look "was meant to be a nod to the Vader mask." Concept designer Doug Chiang put it differently, saying the character "takes on the persona of Vader to haunt Luke."

  Costume designer Michael Kaplan remembered showing Abrams a version with what he called "spaghetti type lines" running through it. Abrams loved it immediately. Kaplan explained that silver threads in those lines "reflects and changes color with the action." Firelight during a scene, he said, draws the viewer "into the mask."

  Adam Driver's casting in an unnamed role was announced on the 29th of April 2014, months before anyone knew who he would play. He appeared only from behind, still unnamed, in the 88-second Force Awakens teaser Lucasfilm released on the 28th of November 2014. He wielded a jagged red lightsaber with a crossguard. Entertainment Weekly finally revealed both the name Kylo Ren and his design on the 11th of December 2014, through a Lucasfilm-designed Topps-style trading card mock-up. A character called "Kybo Ren" had briefly appeared decades earlier, in the 1985 animated series Star Wars: Droids. A Vanity Fair photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz in May 2015 finally confirmed that Driver was the actor behind the mask.

  On set, other cast members described Driver as a method actor who sometimes kept his mask on between takes and stayed in character as Ren. Driver said his goal was "to forget you're in Star Wars and treat it like any other job that's filled with moments and problems." He reasoned that inside the story itself, "Darth Vader is real." That instinct, treating the Force like something the character actually lived inside, shaped how the film's writers would soon start describing exactly who Ren was.

• 3. A Complex Villain

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  Speaking to Empire in August 2015, Abrams said, "Kylo Ren is not a Sith." He works, Abrams explained, "under Supreme Leader Snoke, who is a powerful figure on the dark side of the Force." Abrams had already said the character "came to the name Kylo Ren when he joined a group called the Knights of Ren." Robbie Collin of The Telegraph called him "a hot-headed, radicalised dark side extremist, whose red lightsaber splutters and crackles as violently as his temper." Abrams agreed that the weapon mattered, calling it something "he built himself," as "dangerous and as fierce and as ragged as the character."

  Melissa Leon of The Daily Beast called his use of the Force "formidable." She pointed to his ability to stop a blaster shot in mid-air and to immobilize victims and probe their minds against their will. Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan told Entertainment Weekly in August 2015 that after writing four Star Wars films, "there's never been a character quite like the one that Adam plays." Kasdan added that the role was "full of emotion." Abrams noted that Ren "isn't as fully formed as when we meet a character such as Darth Vader," and is "not your prototypical mustache-twirling bad guy."

  In December 2015, Driver said that despite looking like Vader, Ren was "unlike any villain the franchise has seen." He described "a recklessness about him that's maybe not normally associated with the Dark Side." He contrasted it with the usual sense of "order, and structure, and full commitment." Driver pointed to the costume and lightsaber themselves as the metaphor, saying "it could just not work at any moment; that it could just blow up."

  Driver later said he knew several details of Ren's backstory from early in production. In an interview with journalist Lev Grossman before The Rise of Skywalker, Driver described his understanding of the family. He said Han and Leia "were way too self-absorbed and into this idea of themselves as heroes to really be attentive parents." Abrams had told Driver from the start to imagine "a journey of a character completely opposite to Darth Vader." That person begins as a child and becomes a man across three films. Asked by IGN in December 2017 whether Ren could be redeemed, Last Jedi director Rian Johnson replied, "Darth Vader was worse than Kylo ever was, I think, and Vader got redeemed." Rise of Skywalker co-writer Chris Terrio made a similar comparison. "Vader was complicit in genocide and cruelty and depravity," he said, adding, "there is this inherent optimism in Star Wars that the light in you is never truly gone." Terrio added that Leia "never really gave up hope that Ren could be redeemed." Abrams agreed. Because Ren's mother believed there was still light in him, he said, "it was hard to imagine that she would be wrong about him." That question would not be settled by words alone, but by what Ren chose to do the moment Rey needed him most.

• 4. The Force Dyad

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  In The Rise of Skywalker, released in 2019, Ren and Rey learn they share what's called a "dyad" in the Force. Screenwriter Chris Terrio described the pair as "sort of soulmates in the Force" and "twins of fate, twins of destiny." Abrams and Johnson both described the relationship in romantic terms, though they didn't agree on exactly what kind. During production of The Force Awakens, Abrams said he saw as much of a "brother-sister thing" between them as a "romantic thing," rooted in their connection through the Force. Johnson explained that during The Last Jedi, their scenes built intimacy through Force-linked conversations rather than physical proximity.

  Johnson compared one particular scene, Ren's appeal for Rey to join him in The Last Jedi, to the love confession in the 1999 film Notting Hill. He said the moment "wasn't just a manipulation," but "a very naked, open, emotional appeal," Ren's own version of the line "I'm just a girl standing in front of a guy." Johnson said Driver "captured it so well" in that single, quiet plea. That plea, and Rey's refusal, would not be the last time the two stood on opposite sides of the same choice.

• 5. Screen Story

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  On the desert world Jakku, Ren kills an elderly man named Lor San Tekka while hunting for a map that leads to Luke Skywalker. He orders his stormtroopers to kill the local villagers, then captures the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. From Poe, Ren learns that the map has been hidden inside the droid BB-8. Tracking the droid to the planet Takodana, Ren captures the scavenger Rey and interrogates her, discovering that she is strong with the Force. Rey resists the interrogation and, through the Force, senses his fear that he will never match his grandfather.

  On Starkiller Base, Han Solo confronts his son and urges him to abandon the dark side, warning that Snoke will kill him once the galaxy is under control. Ren appears to waver, then ignites his lightsaber and kills him. Chewbacca, enraged, shoots and wounds Ren in response. Ren then chases down Rey and the former stormtrooper Finn as they flee the collapsing base. He overpowers Finn in a lightsaber duel, injuring him badly, before Rey takes up the blade herself and begins to turn the fight against him. A seismic fissure splits the ground and separates them before the duel can finish. Rey and Chewbacca escape with the unconscious Finn, while Snoke orders General Hux to bring Ren to him to complete his training.

  In The Last Jedi, Ren begins speaking with Rey through a Force connection neither of them controls. She learns from Luke that Ben turned to the dark side after Luke, seeing a vision of the destruction Ben would cause, was briefly tempted to kill him as he slept. Ben awoke to find Luke standing over him with a lightsaber drawn, turned on his uncle, and destroyed the Jedi Temple. Snoke berates Ren for failing to defeat Rey, so Ren leads an attack on a Resistance ship to prove himself. He hesitates when he senses his mother aboard, but his wingmen fire anyway, nearly killing her. When Rey comes to confront him, Ren captures her and delivers her to Snoke, who tortures her and then orders Ren to finish her off. Instead, Ren kills Snoke and, with Rey's help, cuts down his guards. He asks Rey to rule the galaxy at his side. She refuses, and a Force struggle between them over Luke's old lightsaber snaps the weapon in half, knocking Ren unconscious.

  After Rey escapes, Ren frames her for Snoke's death and uses the Force to choke General Hux until Hux accepts him as the new Supreme Leader. Ren then leads an assault on the Resistance's base on the planet Crait. When Luke appears on the battlefield, Ren orders his men to open fire, but the shots pass through Luke harmlessly. Ren faces him alone, only to learn that Luke is nothing more than a Force projection, a distraction that lets the Resistance escape.

  A year into ruling the First Order, Ren searches for a Sith wayfinder that will lead him to the hidden planet Exegol. There he finds Emperor Palpatine, resurrected and revealing that he engineered Snoke to lure Ren to the dark side all along. Palpatine unveils the Final Order, a fleet of superlaser-armed Star Destroyers built by the Sith Eternal, and offers Ren the armada if he kills Rey. Ren keeps reaching out to Rey through the Force to find her, eventually tracking her to a second wayfinder on the moon Kef Bir. He destroys the wayfinder and duels her, but Leia reaches out to him through the Force at a crucial moment. That distraction gives Rey the opening to run him through. Guilt-stricken, Rey heals him with the Force and tells him she wanted Ben Solo's hand, not Kylo Ren's. After she takes his ship and leaves, Ren speaks with a memory of his father, who urges him to let go of the dark side. He throws away his lightsaber and becomes Ben Solo again.

  Ben travels to Exegol to help Rey face Palpatine, who is now draining life from both of them to restore his full strength. Using their connection, Rey passes Ben his grandfather's old lightsaber, and he cuts down the Knights of Ren before Palpatine casts him into a chasm. Rey kills Palpatine but collapses afterward, seemingly dead. Ben returns to her side and pours the last of his own life into her, reviving her and dying in the process. The two share a kiss before he is gone, his body fading into the Force alongside Leia's. Ben Solo's name, and not Kylo Ren's, was the one that outlasted him in the stories that followed.

• 6. Comics And Books

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  Marvel's 2019 miniseries Age of Resistance gave Kylo Ren his own one-shot, Kylo Ren #1. In it, he leads a First Order battalion to conquer a planet that even Darth Vader had failed to bring under Imperial control. The same anthology places him briefly in Finn's own issue, crossing paths with Finn during his stint as a sanitation worker on Starkiller Base. In General Hux #1, Ren and Hux are stranded together on a hostile planet and forced to set aside their mutual dislike to survive. Supreme Leader Snoke #1 shows Snoke subjecting Ren to physical and mental torments meant to sharpen his anger. Snoke then takes him to the swamp planet Dagobah, where Luke had once trained under Yoda. Inside the same cave where Luke once faced a vision of Darth Vader, Ren is confronted by visions of Luke, Han, and Leia. He destroys the vision of Luke but cannot bring himself to banish the images of his parents, who beg him to return to the light.

  The 2019-2020 graphic novel The Rise of Kylo Ren finally shows how Ben Solo became Kylo Ren. As a boy, Ben trains under Luke Skywalker alongside fellow students Voe, Hennix, and Tai, with Voe growing jealous of his superior Force ability. On a mission to the planet Elphrona with Luke and Lor San Tekka, Ben secretly communicates telepathically with Snoke. There, the group encounters the Knights of Ren, Force-wielding mercenaries named after their leader. Their leader offers Ben an open invitation to join them someday, then leaves his own mask behind.

  Years later, Luke appears ready to kill a sleeping Ben, who wakes, fights back, and watches lightning strike and destroy the Jedi Temple. Voe, Hennix, and Tai return to find Ben before the burning ruins. Believing he destroyed it, Voe attacks him, and Hennix is hurt in the struggle. Ben flees, meets a scarred Snoke, who urges him toward the Knights of Ren, and retrieves the Ren mask left behind at Elphrona. Wearing it puts him in contact with Ren, who invites him to meet the Knights on the planet Vanrak.

  Before Ben can leave, his old classmates confront him. He uses the Force to catch Voe after she falls from a building. Hennix, believing Ben has killed her, hurls a lightsaber at him. Deflecting it, Ben accidentally bisects Hennix. Ben collapses the ground around Voe and Tai, then escapes to join the Knights. They tell him he must provide a "good death" to earn membership. On the mining moon of Mimban, the Knights execute a group of locals in front of him, horrifying Ben. When Voe and Tai track him down, Ren kills Tai and tells Ben that Snoke was wrong about him. Enraged, Ben duels Ren and runs him through, giving Ren the "good death" he had asked for. Ben then kills Voe with Ren's own lightsaber, and the surviving Knights kneel before him. He bleeds and cracks his own blue Kyber crystal to forge a crossguard lightsaber. Snoke's voice, unseen, asks him what his new name will be.

  Kylo Ren narrates portions of the sequel trilogy's novelizations, written by Alan Dean Foster in 2015, Jason Fry in 2017, and Rae Carson in 2019. According to Kristin Baver's book Skywalker: A Family at War, Ben Solo would have inherited the title "Prince of Alderaan" had the planet and the royal House of Organa not been destroyed before his birth. He was still considered a member of the galaxy's Elder Houses, entitled to ceremonial titles such as "Supreme Governor of Birren," a small Inner Rim planet settled by Alderaanian explorers. Through his maternal grandmother, Padmé Amidala, Ben is also linked to the Naberrie family of Naboo.

  Claudia Gray's 2016 novel Star Wars: Bloodline and Chuck Wendig's 2017 novel Star Wars: Aftermath: Empire's End both note that, because Alderaan was destroyed, Leia gave birth to Ben on Chandrila, the homeworld of Mon Mothma and the temporary capital of the New Republic. Ben was born in 5 ABY, one year and four days after the Battle of Endor depicted in 1983's Return of the Jedi. Kylo Ren is also mentioned in Delilah S. Dawson's 2017 novel Star Wars: Phasma, set before The Force Awakens.

  Daniel José Older's 2018 novel Last Shot: A Han and Lando Novel notes that young Ben was never formally invested as a "Prince of Alderaan," despite his mother leading the Alderaanian diaspora. Alderaan had roughly 2 billion people when it was destroyed. About 60,000 survived by chance, having been outside the star system at the time. The book notes that modern China and India together have a combined population of about 2.8 billion, for scale. One of the survivors, Cara Dune, served as a New Republic marshal around 9 ABY, presumably under Leia's authority. Dune is played by Gina Carano in The Mandalorian. None of that royal lineage or hidden backstory ever surfaces in the sequel trilogy itself, leaving it to games, toys, and stray television cameos to fill in the rest of Ren's afterlife in Star Wars media.

• 7. Beyond The Screen

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  The 2015 Disney Infinity 3.0 expansion tied to The Force Awakens let players control Kylo Ren, with a separate figurine sold alongside it. He also appears as a playable character in the strategy game Star Wars: Force Arena. Hasbro produced a Kylo Ren action figure and a 6 inch version for its Black Series line. Lego released him in two playsets, Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle in 2015 and Battle on Takodana in 2016, along with a separate Lego Buildable Figure. The Lego version of the character later appeared in the 2016 animated short series Lego Star Wars: The Resistance Rises, and as a playable character in both Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. In Star Wars Battlefront II, Kylo Ren is voiced by Matthew Wood when masked and Roger Craig Smith when unmasked. In one sequence, he interrogates an officer named Del Meeko about Lor San Tekka's location using the Force, then hands Del over to a former comrade named Hask once Del gives up the information.

  The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, released in 2020, sends Rey through time after a Return of the Jedi-era Vader steals a time-travelling key from her. Vader delivers the key to a past version of Palpatine, and together they meet a post-Last Jedi Supreme Leader Ren, who introduces himself as Vader's own grandson. Unaware that he will later be resurrected, Palpatine decides to recruit Ren as his new apprentice and brings him to the second Death Star, hoping he will kill both Vader and Luke. Rey arrives with a younger version of Luke to stop them. After BB-8 steals the time key back, Rey sends a defeated Ren home, where he wrecks his own room in anger.

  Adam Driver reprised the role twice for Saturday Night Live. In a January 2016 "Undercover Boss" sketch, Ren poses as a radar technician named "Matt" to learn what Starkiller Base employees really think of him. In January 2020 he returned as an intern named "Randy" aboard a Star Destroyer. Matthew Wood voiced Kylo Ren in the Star Wars Resistance series finale, "The Escape," in which Ren kills Agent Tierny for failing to destroy the Colossus Resistance. An excerpt of Adam Driver's own dialogue from The Force Awakens was reused for Ren's brief appearance in the Star Wars Rebels finale, "A World Between Worlds."

  At Disney's Galaxy's Edge, in both Disneyland and Disney's Hollywood Studios, Kylo Ren appears as a walk-around character and during the Star Tours attraction. In Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, the character appears in audio-animatronic form, with Driver himself providing the voice. In November 2019, kabuki actor Ichikawa Ebizō XI starred as Ren in a stage production called Star Wars Kabuki: Kairennosuke and the Three Shining Swords, retelling events from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. His own son, Kangen Horikoshi, played a younger version of the character in the play's third act. None of those spinoffs needed to convince anyone that Driver's performance mattered. Critics and readers had already made up their minds.

• 8. Reception

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  In January 2018, readers of Empire magazine voted Kylo Ren the seventh greatest movie villain of all time. IGN's Terri Schwartz called Adam Driver's performance "spectacular," writing that it "adds great depth to a character who could have come off as one-dimensional." Robbie Collin, writing for The Daily Telegraph, argued that calling Ren "this film's Vader would be accurate in a sense." That description, he said, undersold "the deep ingenuity" behind a character shaped by writers Abrams, Kasdan, and Arndt.

  Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter noted that Ren was "given a pronounced inferiority complex, a clever bad guy twist." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that the character was a "bald-faced attempt to clone Darth Vader." Still, Travers said, Driver, "masked and unmasked, gives him hypnotic and haunting contours." Not every critic was won over. Vulture's Kyle Buchanan said he was underwhelmed when the film finally revealed Driver's face beneath the mask.

  Melissa Leon of The Daily Beast disagreed, comparing Ren to the more one-dimensional Vader of 1977's original film and calling Ren "a living battleground between darkness and light." She argued that an ordinary human face under the mask made the character "far more resonant" than earlier Star Wars villains. JJ Abrams told Entertainment Weekly that working with Driver "was a great joy," since the actor "threw himself into it in a deep and remarkable way."

  Some viewers noted that Ben Solo's fall echoes an older Star Wars Expanded Universe character, Jacen Solo, the son of Han and Leia who becomes a fallen Jedi and Sith Lord known as Darth Caedus. Two characters other fans already knew, Jacen Solo and Revan of Knights of the Old Republic, had walked a similar road years before Kylo Ren ever put on his mask.