WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren - Chapter One, by Charles Soule, Will Sliney, Guru-eFX and VC's Travis Lanham, on sale now.
One of the biggest mysteries of the Star Wars sequel trilogy has been who, or what, the Knights of Ren are. We first glimpsed the masked mercenaries -- and it really was only a glimpse -- in a flashback sequence in The Force Awakens, standing around the fallen Jedi padawan who bears their name, Kylo Ren. The scene alluded to the possibility of the Knights being involved in the destruction of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Temple, where he had trained his troubled nephew and other students.
In The Last Jedi, Luke detailed the moments leading up to the Temple's fiery wreckage, with him shamefully attempting to kill Ben Solo, only for Ben to defend himself. The film failed to even mention the Knights, however, which director Rian Johnson attributed to the lack of a natural place for them in his story. The accompanying tie-in media has also been a Knight-less void so far which, coupled with the enigmatic anonymity that their armor gives them, has turned a group of background characters into figures on par with Boba Fett levels of awe in the Star Wars fandom.
All of this, unfortunately, makes the reveal in the first issue of Marvel's Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren fall a bit flat.
NOT A 'WHO,' BUT A 'WHAT'
The issue begins "long ago," with a fully masked, but not fully clothed, Knight on a snowy planet introducing himself: "I am called Ren. But that's not my name." His torso is horribly scarred; burned, almost. He's speaking to two younger men, Karsst and his brother, Filin, explaining they've been searching of them for a while, having heard about their murderous prowess. The next panel pulls out to unveil Ren's fellow Knights locked in the heat of battle, and he explains that they were sent to make contact with Karsst by their "friend" (that is, Snoke).
Karsst is a Force-user, something the Knight calls the "shadow," which is a necessary requirement of being admitted to their order. He and his brother don't need further convincing to enlist; perhaps spurred on by the desire to escape their current War Is Hell predicament. After agreeing to follow Ren, the masked man denies to the siblings that he's the one in charge, which is when, at long last, we get the Ren explanation: "You don't follow me, friend. You follow this, the Ren."
As Ren says that, he ignites his red lightsaber. "The Ren doesn't stop to worry about what it's burning or the right or wrong of it, or the goals it might achieve. The Ren just is. It lives and it consumes, and it doesn't apologize. It is nature and nothing else. I believe in that principle on a deep level. In fact, I've dedicated my life to it."
That's right: A "Ren" is a lightsaber.
A GOOD DEATH
Ren -- not the lightsaber, the man -- follows up this breakdown of his philosophy by instructing the brothers that all he needs from them is a death. "A good death." With little hesitation, Filin shoots his brother in cold blood. Sadly for him, his lack of Force sensitivity compared to his brother makes this a redundant sacrifice. It also turns our minds to that "good death" that Kylo Ren, a future Knight, provides in The Force Awakens when he slays his own father.
What we can't get past, however, are the silly ramifications of the Ren name explanation. If, as it appears, the word is simply the Knights' unique name for Star Wars' signature plasma blade, this just makes them the Knights of... Lightsaber. You could argue this ingrains them further into ronin territory; the romanticism of wandering warriors who are tightly bonded to their weapons. But you can't get around the fact that this means Ben Solo, with all the subtlety of a kid choosing his first MySpace page username in the early '00s, effectively renamed himself Kylo Lightsaber. It would be like Harry Potter deciding to go by Harry Wand. Actually, it's very in-character for someone like Kylo.
Star Wars fans will be expecting big things from the Knights' reappearance in The Rise of Skywalker. The shallow meaning -- as many will undoubtedly view it -- behind their name doesn't bode well for how substantial this inclusion may be.