Entertainment
Star Wars Officially Continues ‘The Last Jedi’ With a New Spin-Off
Star Wars: The Last Jedi ended with one of the biggest power shifts in the sequel trilogy. Supreme Leader Snoke was dead, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) had seized control of the First Order, and the Resistance had been reduced to a handful of survivors escaping Crait aboard the Millennium Falcon. By the time audiences caught up with Kylo again in The Rise of Skywalker, however, his reign was already well underway. That left a sizable chapter of Kylo Ren’s story largely unexplored. We knew he had declared himself Supreme Leader after killing Snoke, but the movies never really showed what happened when he returned to the First Order and actually had to claim that authority. Now, Star Wars is finally returning to the immediate aftermath of The Last Jedi to show exactly how Kylo Ren’s reign began.
Marvel’s new five-issue series Star Wars: The Fall of Kylo Ren, written by Charles Soule with art by Will Sliney, follows Kylo Ren during the period between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. A new preview of the first issue reveals that Kylo returns to the First Order after surviving a major ordeal and immediately finds that Snoke’s death has left considerably more instability behind than he may have expected.
The preview opens with Kylo traveling aboard his TIE Silencer, reflecting on the trials that have prepared him to move forward and “meet his destiny.” He soon contacts the Finalizer and makes his new position perfectly clear, identifying himself as the Supreme Leader and ordering the ship to prepare for his arrival. Things aren’t exactly going well in his absence. At Hetzal Prime, General Hux and Admiral Pryde are overseeing a battle that threatens the Finalizer itself. Hux is already clashing with Pryde, threatening to strip the admiral of his rank if he doesn’t get into position within sixty seconds. Pryde responds with open contempt for Hux, suggesting the cracks Kylo later identifies within the First Order were already becoming impossible to ignore.
‘The Fall of Kylo Ren’ Picks Up After ‘The Last Jedi’
Kylo’s arrival quickly changes the situation. When enemy soldiers board the Finalizer, he tears through them with his lightsaber before ordering the First Order fleet to retreat from the battle entirely. It’s a striking introduction to Kylo as Supreme Leader because he’s walking into an organization that is already struggling to function without its former leader. When Hux and Pryde welcome him back, Kylo isn’t interested in celebrating his return. He tells them that the First Order, once the most powerful military force in the galaxy, has become “a disgrace.” More importantly, he says he can sense the disunity spreading through its ranks.
That immediately puts a different spin on the version of the First Order seen in The Rise of Skywalker. Kylo may have technically become Supreme Leader aboard Snoke’s flagship in The Last Jedi, but killing his master was only the beginning; actually controlling the enormous military organization Snoke left behind was another matter entirely. The preview also puts Hux and Pryde’s eventual roles in The Rise of Skywalker into sharper focus. Hux’s resentment of Kylo ultimately becomes so intense that he betrays the First Order simply because he wants to see Kylo lose, while Pryde proves considerably more loyal to the cause. The Fall of Kylo Ren now has an opportunity to show how those divisions developed during Kylo’s rise.
Soule has already explored crucial pieces of Kylo Ren’s history in The Rise of Kylo Ren, which chronicled Ben Solo’s transformation following the destruction of Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Temple. The Fall of Kylo Ren tackles the other end of that story. Instead of showing how Ben Solo became Kylo Ren, the new series can finally explore what happened when Kylo got everything he thought he wanted. That’s an especially interesting missing piece considering how little time The Rise of Skywalker spends with Kylo as Supreme Leader before Emperor Palpatine’s return changes the direction of his story. The Last Jedi leaves him at the absolute height of his power, having killed Snoke, rejected both the Jedi and Sith masters who shaped him, and taken the First Order for himself. The next movie largely skips over what he actually did with that power.
The Fall of Kylo Ren is finally filling in that blank when it releases on August 12.
- Release Date
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December 13, 2017
- Runtime
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152 minutes
- Director
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Rian Johnson
- Writers
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Rian Johnson
- Producers
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Kathleen Kennedy, Ram Bergman, Leifur B. Dagfinnsson
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