Boba Fett, Darth Maul, IG-88, Dengar, Biggs, Wedge, Porkins, Lobot, Nien Nub, the Max Rebo Band, and many more have all become fan favorites despite the least amount of screen time or any dialogue. They enriched the world of Star Wars, rounded it out with all types of beings, both ordinary and unsavory. Boba Fett and Darth Maul are the standouts in this crowd of minor but memorable characters as each have been expanded to depth in the growing catalogue of canon material. The Disney Star Wars Trilogy attempted to do similar things with their own flash in the pan characters like Babu Frik. By the end of the Disney run, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker embarrassingly buried the thread of a group of bad guy characters known as the Knights of Ren.
Fan expectations hit the ceiling when Disney purchased Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012, and promptly announced a new sequel trilogy. The sequel trilogy grossed $4.4 billion at the worldwide box office, repaying that purchased ticket and then some. The trilogy followed the journey of a desert nobody named Rey who grew into a powerful Jedi that supported the Resistance efforts against the First Order. She was diametrically opposed by another powerful force user, the fallen Jedi Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia. Ben fell to the Dark Side after a snafu with Luke Skywalker during his Jedi training. He killed most of his classmates, torched Luke’s academy, and ran off to serve Sith-adjacent Supreme Leader Snoke.
With Snoke, Ben turned fully into a villain, joining the ranks of the Knights of Ren, and claiming his new identity as their leader – Kylo Ren. So far as the Disney Trilogy incorporated them into the Star Wars lore, the Knights of Ren appeared in The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker for a total of 192 seconds.
According to the official backstory of the Knights of Ren, they were a merciless group of force-sensitive marauders who ran rampant in the Unknown Regions of the Galaxy. They were always evil; killing, raiding, stealing whatever and whenever they wanted, and were considered expert warriors.
Their philosophy is that of chaos, nihilism, and vicious self-determination. The word elite is used a lot in their descriptions (elite weapons masters, elite pilots, elite renegades etc.) They have no direct affiliation with the Sith, but they are dark side force users of a lesser degree. When Ben Solo joined them, he corralled them as his own personal bodyguards and brought them into the ranks of the First Order. There are six of them under Kylo’s “elite” command: Vicrul, Cardo, Ushar, Trudgen, Kuruk, and Ap’lek. Each has their own fashion style and unique contribution to the group, whether a weapon specialty or piloting.
At first glance in the Force Awakens, fans assumed the best. The Knights of Ren appeared to be an elite Dark Jedi hit squad, not unlike the Inquisitors from Star Wars: Rebels. According to Rey’s force-flashback, they were combatants during the burning of Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Academy. That means they had the ability to slay Jedi, much like the ever-epic Mandalorians. That they did not appear in The Last Jedi meant either they were being saved for a glorious showdown in the finale, or there was never any steam in the engine and the story group had no idea who they were or what to do with them.
Regardless, speculation for the showdown was rife. Could they be pursuers of Rey, like the Nazgul in the Lord of the Rings? Would they lead a commando strike against the Resistance, battling Poe and Finn and Leia? By the end of the Last Jedi, the Resistance was all but annihilated. The Knights of Ren should have been the final attack force, the final scythe to reap the Rebellion harvest for the First Order. Instead, they were merely the last platoon of Stormtroopers between Rey, Ben, and the Emperor in the Sith Citadel.
Collectively, all the fans saw of the Knights of Ren on screen was a whole lot of photoshoot posing. They posed behind Kylo in the rain. They marched with him down Star Destroyer corridors as his entourage. They ominously stood on a large rock overlooking the desert of planet Pasaana as the camera circled them, paired with deep malign music. They stand as a group in the winding walkways of Kijimi City holding their individual characteristic weapons awaiting the flashing lights of paparazzi.
In the end, the anticipated epic showdown, they surround Ben Solo, attack him one at a time, and get defeated in the most trivial ways. The audience knows none of their names, nor can tell the difference between them as to who is being killed by Kylo in the dark fog of planet Exegol. As hastily and uncertain as they entered the Disney Trilogy, they were lightsabered out of the fandom. If an account is taken of their total impact in the sequel trilogy, they basically amount to Kylo Ren’s edgy Boy Band. They are great at posing with their lead, they can march in step very well, and they look fantastic standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a backdrop. That is essentially it. Their hit single should be, “Looking for Rey in All the Wrong Places.”
It remains to be seen whether the Knights of Ren will be redeemed in any future Star Wars content. Going by their limited inclusion in the comics, any future rise to popularity for them is doubtful. They are a one and done appearance group.
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