Kylo Ren has a crew, and they have a very exacting dress code.
For years, we’ve been dealing with the teased non-presence of the Knights of Ren, Ben Solo’s super baddy posse, possibly former Jedi trainees, who are known by reputation in the realm of the new Star Wars trilogy and not much else. Rian Johnson opted not to include them in The Last Jedi, which means that we’re having to wait until The Rise of Skywalker to finally learn who these people are and maybe learn why they’re called the Knights of Ren.
We’ve gotten some hints at them in the past few months, but we recently got our best look yet via Empire, whose major feature on The Rise of Skywalker features a new image of the Knights, in the flesh, looking intimidating as all heck.
The image shows the Knights standing in a line, weapons at their chests, as what appears to be smoke trickles through the air in front of them. They’re all masked, and are wearing weathered variations of the same sort of outfit Ben Solo himself wears — mask, striped black suit. One of them is clearly carrying a blaster rifle, though it’s not easy to see what weapons the others have. They look intimidating, and pretty rad, though also like the kind of group that might get killed off in one fell swoop should the movie require it.
The article in which the picture appears, a preview of the magazine feature, doesn’t have any details about the Knights, except that, yes, thank goodness, they’re in the movie. The brief Abrams quote featured is just the director insisting that he did not need to “repair” the franchise after The Last Jedi, which is a trope we should all probably let die.
As for their name, my hope is that Ben just insisted that his name was Kylo Ren and therefore his friends had to be the Knights of Ren. I think that would be extremely in character. Anyway, The Rise of Skywalker hits theatres December 19.