Somewhere in the middle of The Last Jedi we found out the whereabouts of Luke’s students. But what does this mean for the saga going forward? Let’s break it down.

The quote from Luke has fans everywhere speculating that the Knights of Ren are made up of former students in Luke’s Jedi academy. The exact quote from Luke when describing that fateful night when he and Ben Solo had their confrontation:

He vanished with a handful of my students, and slaughtered the rest.

But how many is a “handful”? I mean, I know what a handful of popcorn is, and I know what a handful of oranges is, and they mean two different things completely. In both cases, the describe the amount that can fit in a hand. But with people? All bets are off. The number is figurative, and if you ask different people, you get a totally different answer. Check these responses to that very question here. You’ll see anywhere form 2 to 10 people. Quite a wide range.

People have said early on that the “seven” described in early The Force Awakens rumors were are reference to the “seven samurai” from Kurosawa. It’s easy to speculate that this handful of students, may have been this group of “seven” originally speculated about. In those early leaks, all we found out, was that there was the “clan” and the “seven”, and it seemed that the two were in opposition. There was a lot of wild speculation before TFA of who the “seven” could be, and they turned out to maybe at best be the Knights of Ren. The clan was barely seen, except maybe with the “clan leader”, and we’ve discussed this group in detail before. That said, we barely know any details about them! The source of all this was, of course, Making Star Wars. From the original post:

Flashback: Exterior Night Battlefield — Fierce battle! Sword is being used by the CLAN against the SEVEN.

At the time, we didn’t know who they were, and we still don’t. But this group was referred to only by their size of seven. Could it be that it was the last “seven surviving Jedi students”, and eventually got shortened to “seven”?

People have attempted to debunk recent leaks, in particular this one seems relevant here:

“The Knights of Ren will all wield red lightsabers”

I’m not saying that any of the recent leaks are true, but this one at least to me seems plausible. I think the direction that everything is going is that there will be a tension between Kylo Ren and Rey, and they will attempt to join forces at least once more. I think Rey still sees light in him, and thinks that connecting with him could be the key to bringing down the First Order and ending the conflict. For this reason, there needs to be other Force-weilding, lightsaber fighting foes in her way. And as it turns out, we have an entire crew to select excellent characters from.

No doubt, JJ likes the Knights of Ren, and has stated that he would like explore them in a spin-off if given the chance. This would be great, but I would say that with Episode IX he has the chance, and in some ways the responsibility to explore these characters that he created and loves so much. The history between Kylo Ren and the other Knights of Ren will make for interesting and engaging dialogue if Kylo turns on the knights to fight with Rey. Lots of potential there. Let’s see what they do with it.

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