The Knights of Ren were an elite group of weapon-wielding followers of the dark side that we know very little about. The Knights of Ren will almost certainly be in Episode IX. The question is, what will their role be? Let’s put together all the rumors and leaks we have about this group and speculate on what they will do in the next film!

The Knights of Ren is a group that has drawn a lot of intrigue with very little actually known about them. Fans have been eager to learn more about them ever since their brief mention in The Force Awakens. J.J. loved them, and the only reason why Rian Johnson didn’t explore them in The Last Jedi was simply a matter of time, and the fact that using the Knights of Ren instead of Snoke’s elite Praetorian guards may end up complicating that scene too much.

All we know is that Snoke considered Kylo Ren the master of this group, and that they are followers of the dark side. It’s possible that Snoke had other deep connections to them, such as commanding them as Supreme Leader of the First Order. But what role will they have in Episode IX?

The Beyond

One of the biggest rumors we have about the Knights of Ren was relased only recently by MakingStarWars.net. According to the site, “The Knights of Ren have returned from The Beyond”. And an “threat from the beyond reveals itself“, which makes Kylo Ren vulnerable. It almost sounds to me like the Knights of Ren have brought back something from The Beyond, or may have returned because of it ( can only assume that the two points are linked). But what, exactly, is The Beyond? First, I’m reminded of the Acolytes of the Beyond. This was a group of non-Force-using “dark side mystics” that believed that the dark side was the only way to shift the currents of the Force, which they viewed as a flowing river that we are enslaved to. According to the 2015 Aftermath book, This group believed that The Beyond was a place that the Sith go after they die. They believe that dead Sith can still affect the living, and could be connected to artifacts from deceased Sith Lords. In fact, in the Aftermath trilogy this group obtained Vader’s lightsaber years after the battle of Endor.

It’s possible that we’ve seen this place in a recent Vader comic. Vader enters some kind of portal under Vader’s castle on Mustafar. He then turns into some sort of astral form, and travels on this other plane. We don’t know for sure, but if The Beyond is some sort of Sith afterlife, I would expect it would be similar to this other plane that Vader travels on. Pure speculation on my part, but if the new canon is building to something, these may be connections worth exploring. Given that Luke may be traveling through some other plane of existence as well, the events that could take place in the film could be potent. Imagine a battle royale between Jedi Force-ghosts and Sith spirits on some kind of ethereal plane in a Star Wars film!

At any rate, somehow the Knights of Ren have returned from The Beyond, which by all accounts is some sort of afterlife as far as we know. If the connection to the Vader comic is true, could it be that they traveled to Mustafar and entered this portal? That would certainly be epic. What news and information did they bring back? If there is a threat coming from The Beyond, then what could that be? The obvious idea would be something like Palpatine’s spirit, which would certainly tie the nine films together, but would it be a good idea for them to do this in the film? I’m not sure. I’m a huge fan of Palpatine, and this might actually work if done well. It would be kind of cool to see Palpatine in a Star Wars film again, and would explain why we heard Palpatine’s voice in the Force-vision that Rey had in The Force Awakens. I’m not necessarily opposed to this, but I would be curious what other fans think. Another possibility is the spirit of Anakin/Vader or Snoke. Bringing people back from the dead in movies is often met with groans of “here we go again…”, but if done well, it just might be cool.

A Backstory?

J.J. Abrams stated in The Force Awakens director commentary that there was a backstory, and it is a story that he would love to explore some day. Episode IX certainly provides a great venue for that. First of all, it is very likely that some of the members are former Jedi that were trained by Luke. According to Luke in The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren

“had vanished with a handful of my students, and slaughtered the rest.”

So it seems heavily implied that those that left with him would have joined the Knights of Ren.

As pointed out by Star Wars Explain the new Star Wars Visual Dictionary suggests that the Knights of Ren are indeed dark side Force-users. Until this content, which came out after Episode IX had begun production, we had no confirmation that they were Force-users. Connecting to the discussion above on The Beyond, a two year-old video from Star Wars Explain proposes that they could be connected to the Acolytes of The Beyond. A lot has changed since then, and given that the Acolytes were not Force-users themselves, this sort of doesn’t connect with what we now know. That said, the Knights could certainly be connected to the Acolytes in some other way, even if they did not directly descend from them. The biggest connection is the obsession with masks. The Acolytes were obsessed with Sith artifacts, similar to how Kylo talks to Vader’s helmet, the Accolytes thought that artifacts could connect them to deceased Sith.

If the Knights of Ren are Force-users, then they will be suitable antagonists to Rey and Kylo, once they overcome this new threat. More lightsaber fights is definitely on the table if this happens, I would say, which is more than welcome.

Darth Ren?

This last one I’ll just leave as a “what if” possibility for a deeper backstory. Years ago, the internet was treated to probably the first “leak” about then Episode VII from someone named Mizzlewump. I wrote an article long ago about how would could re-interpret those rumors, given that so many of them turned out to be true after The Force Awakens came out. One line in particular always struck me:

Loredump: In the script, the Sith are a couple thousand years old, founded by an ancestor of Palpatine called Ruin; the apprentice in this film also goes by that name.

So given that a lot of other parts of that old rumor sort of sounded like they could have been early versions of the TFA script, and the fact that there was a Legends character named Darth Ruin that was a fallen Jedi that became a Sith 2000 years before the battle of Yavin, and the similarity between “Ren” and “Ruin” made me wonder if early drafts of TFA had someone named Darth Ruin that founded the Knights of Ruin, and later versions changed “Ruin” to “Ren”. In other words, was there an ancient Sith named Darth Ren in an early draft of TFA? The idea of the Knights of Ren being an offshoot of the Sith is intriguing, for example if a Sith broke off, and denounced his membership before starting his own group of knights. Either way, digging up that old quote brought back some memories of a time when we knew nothing about the new films, and even less about the Knights of Ren. Now, as little as we know, a new picture is emerging of their role, and the clues presented here are the best leads we have. Time will tell, but the speculation is half the fun!

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