Kylo Ren

Kylo Ren, originally born as Ben Solo, is the secondary villain of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. He appears as the main villain of the first two installments, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi; and he progressively becomes the deuteragonist of the third and final installment, The Rise of Skywalker.
He is also the overarching antagonist of the second and final season of the animated television series Star Wars Resistance.
== History ==
=== Star Wars Resistance ===
According to Kel and Eila, Kylo Ren arrived on Tehar with the First Order, where they massacred everyone. The children witnessed Kylo Ren wielding a lightsaber that they've heard in the stories about the Jedi.
After Kazuda saved Kel and Elia from being taken by the First Order, he reported to the Resistance about Kylo Ren's massacre on Tehar.
In retaliation against the Aeosians who supported the Resistance, a fleet of Resurgent-class Star Destroyers invaded their homeworld of Aeos Prime and devastated it. After completing the orbital bombardment, First Order Security Bureau Agent Tierny and Stormtrooper Commander Pyre reported their actions to General Hux but found Supreme Leader Kylo Ren waiting on the other side of the holoprojector. Aware of Pyre and Tierny's failure to defeat the Colossus resistance, he declared that he would not tolerate the existence of any Resistance cell. Reaching out through the Force, Ren influenced the two to stand and point their blasters at each other. He then severed the transmission, leaving his subordinates with an ominous warning about the price for failure.
Though they managed to locate the Colossus station in the Barabesh system, the ensuing battle did not turn in the First Order's favor. Betrayed by the TIE fighter pilot DT-533, the First Order failed to prevent the Resistance operatives Kazuda Xiono and Jarek Yeager from warning their allies of the impending attack. Rather than retreat, however, the citizenry of the Colossus held their ground against the forces of the First Order. While the Ace Squadron intensified their attack run on the main Star Destroyer, Tierny received a transmission from Supreme Leader Ren. She beseeched him to send reinforcements, but Ren rejected her request and declared that the First Order had no tolerance for the weak. With that, Ren telekinetically choked the First Order agent with the Force, unleashing his final punishment on Tierny.
==Personality==
In his youth, Ben Solo was unaware of his true heritage, but suffered from feelings of abandonment due to the struggles his parents had with their lives, which made Leia and Han very absent from their home. Because he is the Skywalker heir and also has a great potential as a Force-user, being seen as a focal point between the heritage of both the light and the dark, Ben was targeted by the revived Emperor Palpatine during his plans to take revenge on the Skywalkers. Therefore, Palpatine created Supreme Leader Snoke, an artificial and genetically modified creature, to lure Ben Solo to the dark side.
When Han and Leia became scared that Ben's uncontrolled raw strength in the Force would lead him to become like Vader, they sent their son to train at Luke Skywalker's Jedi academy. At the academy, Ben was a very reserved student who would keep his feelings to himself and stay isolated from others. During this period, he started to hear voices in his head. Snoke communicated with him, presenting himself as a friend and confident, and simultaneously, Emperor Palpatine also spoke inside Ben's mind to further corrupt him.
As Ben listened to the voices and their advice, they both slowly managed to make Ben Solo doubt the Jedi and his family. Because of this, Ben started to struggle with the dark side of the Force. Eventually, this led to his turn to the dark side when Ben saw his uncle with a lightsaber ignited above his head while he was sleeping and felt betrayed. He then confirmed that the voices were right about everything and that there was no one else that he could trust besides Snoke, so he goes to meet him, and becomes his apprentice.
After he became Kylo Ren, he started to admire the power of his maternal grandfather Anakin Skywalker, but particularly in his Vader incarnation. His attachment to Vader makes him desire to uphold the Sith Lord's legacy by destroying all the remaining traces of the Jedi tradition. He is extremely ruthless, brutal, savage, wrathful, besides showing confidence but carries guilt and remorse for his actions. Like Anakin, he is irresponsible, uncompromising, temperamental and torn by internal conflict. However, given that he didn't complete some of his training before turning evil, his immature nature is more apparent.
However, unlike his maternal grandfather, Kylo is far less able to control his temper and emotions, as well as the fact that he is far less calm, tolerant, phlegmatic, level-headed, reasonable, patient, and far more prone to bouts of rage. To establish his rejection of his past life, he serves the First Order with great passion towards his master Snoke. He does, however, eventually abandon his attachment towards Snoke after finding out that he used him.
Kylo is not without fear: he is afraid that he will never become as powerful as his maternal grandfather and fears that the light side still has a hold on him. Unlike Vader, he finds conflict with these traits, especially towards the idea of family. Because of Snoke's and Sidious' corruption, he believes that his feelings of attachment towards his family are a weakness. Feeling that this care is what holds him back, Kylo believes that to be as powerful as Vader and embrace the dark side is to completely abandon the light side. Thus, he came to believe that Vader's sentimentality was the weakness that led to the fall of the Galactic Empire. For this reason, he even proceeds to murder his father Han to sever his hold on the light side. However, this only results in aggravating his inner conflict, making him be consumed by grief and depression. Sensing that his apprentice was remorseful about his father's death, Snoke starts to have doubts about him, especially after Kylo lost the battle at Starkiller Base to Rey because he was emotionally unbalanced.
Thus, Kylo remains one of the most complex villains of the franchise because of his conflict and emotional vulnerability. Despite committing many heinous crimes, he has his moments of compassion even though he wants to remove all positive traits so he can become stronger. Kylo Ren's internal conflict becomes worse after Han's death and it further increases upon starting to communicate with Rey through their Force-bond. Kylo realizes that Rey was abandoned by her family, similar to how he feels abandoned by his own. This makes him sympathize with her because of shared feelings of loneliness.
She shows compassion towards him, believing he can still be redeemed, while he tries to comfort her by stating that she is not alone. Because of this, feelings start to develop between them, and eventually they fall in love with each other. After touching hands with her and thinking that her parents were merely junk traders that sold her for money, he is convinced that Rey will eventually fall to the dark side and stand beside him. Eventually, ruling the galaxy with Rey by his side would become his greatest ambition.
On the other hand, Rey attempts to convince him to break free and join the light side. For a brief moment, Rey seemed to have succeeded in that regard during their encounter at the Mega-class Star Dreadnought Supremacy, where Kylo murdered his own master Snoke to save her life and then joined her in the battle against the Elite Praetorian Guards. However, despite his feelings for her, he had different plans. Kylo wanted to let the past die: the Jedi, the Sith, the Rebels, etc., and sought to create a new order in the galaxy, so he holds out his hand to Rey, inviting her to join him to create something new in their own image. This ultimately fails when Rey realizes that she didn't manage to turn him to the light, causing her to reject him.Upon taking over the First Order and becoming its Supreme Leader, Kylo led the First Order to invade Crait and during the battle, he also exhibited an obsessive nature with destroying Luke Skywalker. He showcased that he was mentally unstable and disturbed by Luke's presence, besides having a vengeful obsession with killing Luke to finally end the Jedi and take revenge for his uncle's betrayal. Even some of his more heinous men expressed concern towards his obsession.
One year after ruling the galaxy through the First Order, Kylo finds himself in more conflict after learning that Emperor Palpatine resurrected himself form the dead, and that he's been pulling the strings by creating Snoke and the First Order as a means of regaining control of the galaxy. He's even more shocked to learn that Rey is actually the granddaughter of Palpatine as she inherited his power and can use skills as Force lightning.
Kylo becomes determined to kill the Sith Lord to secure his own power, and after learning about Rey's Palpatine lineage, he also desires to turn her for them to take the Throne of the Sith together. Kylo's obsession in turning Rey to the dark side to have her with him clashes with his own dark impulses that demand him to kill her, so he would get rid of the one who had been tempting him towards the light. But because of his feelings of attachment for her, he becomes relieved when he fails to do so.
Following his last duel with Rey and the death of Leia, Kylo becomes very confused and surprised that his mother just died trying to reach him and Rey risked her own life by giving him a great amount of Force energy to heal and save his life. After talking to the memory of his father, he is convinced to hear the request of his loved ones: his parents and Rey, all of whom always believed in him. With this in mind, he throws his crossguard lightsaber into the ocean and cuts ties with the dark side once and for all, wishing to redeem himself for his past mistakes. After coming back to the light, he is moved by the desire to save Rey, so he follows her to Exegol to help her defeat her grandfather.
After Rey sacrifices herself to defeat Palpatine, Ben becomes emotionally distraught over seeing Rey dead. He is not able to accept that someone as strong as Rey, that was able to fight her own inner darkness and help him come back to the light, was gone. So, when he senses that the Force still had not taken her, Ben does not even hesitate to make a choice. His feelings of love and care motivate him to give Rey a second chance by transferring all his remaining life force into Rey, who subsequently finally holds his hand and kisses him before he succumbs to his injuries and vanishes. Even after this, Ben sees Rey crying while mourning for him and speaks to her through the Force, to assure her that he will always be with her.
As such, Ben Solo finds redemption by returning to the light and sacrificing himself for the woman he loves. Afterwards, Rey even takes on the Skywalker surname to honor the ones she came to care about and that she would not have survived the Sith Emperor without, including Ben, because of what he did for her.
==Gallery==
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