Star Wars Confirms Kylo Ren As Luke Skywalker’s First Jedi Student

The Star Wars movies may be done with the Skywalker Saga, but the Star Wars comic books being released by Marvel are helping to keep the story alive. The current Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren series has been especially pivotal at filling in key story points from the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy – namely the evolution of Ben Solo into Kylo Ren. The latest chapter of that story reveals Ben Solo’s first audition to join the Knights of Ren, by revealing just how dangerous an evil he can be. Along that journey we get some key details of the era leading up to Star Wars‘s Sequel Trilogy – like confirmation that Ben Solo / Kylo Ren was Luke Skywalker‘s very first student!

Warning: SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren #3 Follow!

Ben Solo’s story to impress the Knight of Ren revolves around one major milestone in his dark side evolution: killing his first Jedi! That victim turns out to be Hennix, an alien Force user who was one of the first students that Ben ever studied alongside at Luke’s Jedi Temple. However, in order to make the story of why killing Hennix seem important to the Knights of Ren, Ben has to explain the depth of his relationship with Hennix and his other two friends, Voe and Tai.

In a flashback sequence, we see a young Ben Solo with Voe, Hennix, and Tai, learning the ways of The Force from a much younger (and happier) Luke Skywalker. It’s then that we get the quote below, in which Ben confirms that he was the very first student that Luke Skywalker took on after the fall of the Empire, while trying to rebuild the Jedi Order:

“We all studied together,” Ben says. “I was first, but they came not long after. Voe, Hennix and Tai.”

This reveal is something that many Star Wars fans have speculated about since learning of Kylo Ren’s backstory in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. However, learning it as solid fact of canon really does deepen the tragedy of the Sequel Trilogy’s storyline. The fact that Luke picked Ben as his very first choice as a student means that the Jedi Master never even had a chance in rebuilding the Jedi Order – and would be the instrument in causing both the downfall of the Jedi, and the fall of Ben Solo.

…Maybe now the broken and haunted Luke Skywalker we met in Star Wars: The Last Jedi makes a lot more sense?

Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren is now on sale.