The cover of Issue #2 of Charles Soule's Star Wars miniseries, The Rise of Kylo Ren features a Knight that has not appeared in previous material. His position at the center of the page suggests that he's the leader of the group and, based on his conspicuous absence from canon, that he's also the one that Ben Solo replaced after he became Master of the Knights of Ren.
However, there are three possibly deep-cut Easter eggs hidden in his costume hinting at this Knight's ties with the Sith and with the Emperor. Let's dive in!
A SENTINEL DROID HELMET?
The mysterious Knight's helmet bears a suspicious resemblance to the one worn by Palpatine's red Sentinel droids. Star Wars: Battlefront players, as well as readers of Shattered Empire and Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy will know that these Sentinels were Palpatine's vehicle to deliver his terrifying posthumous message: that a select group of officers should start "The Contingency," a plan to ensure the collapse of the Empire after his death by laying waste to Rebel and loyalist planets before retiring to the Unknown Regions -- which could be the same place where Luke and Ben find the Knights of Ren, as this cover illustrates.
The only difference between the Knight's helmet and the Sentinel's head is the color. Everything else, from the shine to the shape is exactly the same. If this is what it looks like then how, exactly, and why would a humanoid choose to wear a droid's head that was last used to destroy the Galaxy?
DWARTII INSCRIPTIONS
As some have pointed out online, the scrabbles on the mystery Knight of Ren's visor look suspiciously like Dwartii runes. This might be another deep cut that will satisfy detail-oriented readers of the Star Wars visual guides.
We recently saw Dwartii runes adorning Snoke's massive ring that encases a crudely cut obsidian stone from Darth Vader's Fortress in Mustafar.
However, that's not the first time that fans have encountered Dwartii: the runes take their name from the four Sages of Dwartii, ancient political philosophers that Palpatine admired greatly. He even decorated his private and public chambers in the Senate and in his Throne Room with their sculptures. The scene where they feature the most prominently in the prequel trilogy is when Anakin switches his allegiance to the Dark Side of the Force by killing Mace Windu in The Revenge of the Sith.
KYLO REN'S FIRST ORDER SHUTTLE
The scene on the cover is rainy and a little blurry, but it looks like the Knights arrived on the same planet as Luke and Ben in what looks a lot like Kylo Ren's, bat-like First Order shuttle that seems to always herald a death: Its first appearance was at the beginning of The Force Awakens, when Kylo cuts down Lor San Tekka, and the next one was in The Last Jedi when it carried him from the massacre in Snoke's Throne Room to the white plains of Crait where he would try to kill Luke Skywalker.
That ship is based off Imperial and First Order models, so the fact that it appears behind the Knights strongly suggests that they were in league with Snoke from the beginning, and not a band of brothers that somehow took Kylo under their wing, as has been speculated in the past.
THE KNIGHTS OF REN REPRESENT LUKE'S DARKEST FEAR
This cover has created waves across the Internet, and not only because of the story it promises. Regardless of whether all the speculation is correct, it clearly depicts the darkest and deepest fear of Luke: that his apprentices will turn against him.
We know that Luke only started to teach "a handful of students" after Ben Solo's powers became a concern for his parents -- although he wanted to uncover the secrets of the Jedi, he was a very reluctant teacher. And who can blame him? Despite his firm adhesion to the Light Side of the Force, his entire experience of the relationship between Masters and Padawans ends with the Master dead at the hands of one of their apprentices, and that apprentice always took the shape of his father, who, from Luke's perspective, killed not only Obi-Wan, but also Palpatine.
This nightmare of his is compounded by Anakin's history of slaughtering Jedi younglings that he should have taught. We don't know if Luke also knows how Anakin failed Ahsoka Tano, but that's yet another example of an apprentice turning against her former master.
Interestingly, though, the mystery Knight is not in an attack stance -- his red lightsaber is down, and he looks incredibly sure of himself, while both Luke and Ben are in an extremely defensive position and look more ready to strike.
Even more interestingly, from afar, the mystery Knight with his swirling cape looks like Kylo Ren's shadow. Out of all the Knights of Ren, his outfit is the most similar to the one donned by the future Supreme Leader of the Galaxy, only much cleaner. When combined with all the Sith, First Order, Emperor, Darth Vader and political symbols that adorn him, his figure carries the weight of an idealized version of the Dark Side -- free of pesky inconveniences like emotions, regrets and mechanical incompetence.
DID LUKE KILL THIS KNIGHT?
This mystery Knight of Ren is the only one wielding a lightsaber -- a red one, nonetheless. It would be tempting to think that this is the lightsaber that Kylo Ren modified to create his crackling greatsword, but given it's in apparent mint condition in the hands of the Knight -- plus, the similarity between Ben Solo's lightsaber hilt and Kylo Ren's -- this theory is very unlikely. A more probable hypothesis is that Luke Skywalker killed this specific Knight of Ren and took apart his lightsaber, harvesting the kyber crystal that adorned his Ahch-To hut.
That red, broken kyber crystal has been torturing eagle-eyed fans for a while now. It's described by the visual guides as a "Recovered Jedi Crusader Pendant" containing a "fragmented Sith lightsaber crystal." We don't know much about Jedi Crusaders, but thanks to the Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith series we do know that the Sith created their kyber crystals by bleeding one that belonged to a Jedi, a quest that usually resulted in the death of the Jedi and frequently in the breaking of the kyber crystal or the Sith.
This is purely speculative, but could Luke Skywalker have killed this Knight of Ren (after all, a Crusader is a "Holy Knight") and recovered his kyber crystal to honor the Jedi from whom it was stolen?
Who knows, given the way the Force works according to Freddie Prinze Jr., maybe the Galaxy balanced this act out by earmarking Ben Solo as the future leader of the Knights of Ren -- one that would wield the Dark Side version of the Crusader's greatsword.
KEEP READING: Why The Rise of Skywalker Final Trailer Feels So Familiar (and Comforting)