Kylo Ren finally got the story that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker didn’t tell.
Marvel’s Star Wars: The Fall of Kylo Ren #1 arrived recently, and the first chapter of the five-issue series digs into one of the sequel trilogy’s biggest missed opportunities by telling the story of what actually happened after Kylo Ren became Supreme Leader of the First Order.
Kylo’s rise to power should have been a huge turning point. Instead, by the time The Rise of Skywalker gets moving, the movie is already racing toward Emperor Palpatine, Exegol, Rey’s family history, Sith wayfinders, and the end of the entire Skywalker Saga. Kylo’s time as Supreme Leader gets squeezed into everything else happening around him.
Star Wars: The Fall of Kylo Ren gives that part of his life some much-needed room. The comic picks up during Kylo’s early days as Supreme Leader and explores how difficult it actually was for him to control the First Order.
Taking Snoke’s throne didn’t suddenly turn Kylo into an all-powerful leader with everyone happily falling into formation. He inherited an organization filled with competing personalities, political maneuvering, and people with agendas of their own.
A major piece of that conflict involves Admiral Hux and the arrival of Officer Pryde. Their growing rivalry adds another layer to the First Order and makes Kylo’s position feel considerably more complicated than what audiences saw in The Rise of Skywalker.
He may technically be Supreme Leader, but having the title and actually controlling the machine beneath him are two very different things.
That additional context also changes how Kylo’s behavior in The Rise of Skywalker can be viewed. Kylo spent the previous two movies fighting himself.
Ben Solo was still buried somewhere beneath the mask, anger, and obsession with Darth Vader, while Kylo desperately tried to destroy every remaining connection to his former identity.
Then, at the end of The Last Jedi, he finally accomplished something enormous. Snoke was dead, Kylo had taken his place, and the First Order belonged to him.
So what did he actually want? That should have been one of the most interesting questions heading into The Rise of Skywalker. Kylo had spent years pursuing power, but once he finally had it, the movie didn’t spend enough time examining what that power meant to him.
Was ruling the First Order satisfying? Did becoming Supreme Leader make him feel stronger? Did it leave him even more isolated? Could he actually become the person he had spent years trying to convince himself he was?
The Fall of Kylo Ren gets to explore those questions by digging further into Kylo’s psychology and the pressure created by his new authority. That makes his position as Supreme Leader feel less like connective tissue between movies and more like an important stage in his transformation.
It also makes his eventual redemption in The Rise of Skywalker more interesting. Kylo Ren’s entire sequel trilogy story is built around the war between Kylo and Ben Solo.
He tries repeatedly to bury Ben, but he can never completely sever himself from his family, his past, or Rey. His return to Ben Solo was meant to provide one of the emotional payoffs of the sequel trilogy and help bring the nine-film Skywalker Saga to its conclusion.
The destination was there in The Rise of Skywalker. The problem was how quickly the movie had to get there. Giving fans more time with Kylo as Supreme Leader helps build a bridge between the man who seized control of the First Order in The Last Jedi and the man who eventually abandoned Kylo Ren and became Ben Solo again.
Seeing him wrestle with leadership, authority, internal First Order politics, and his own fractured identity gives his final decision more weight. Of course, that also raises the familiar Star Wars question of whether important character development should need a comic book to fully land.
Early reactions to The Fall of Kylo Ren have been mixed, with fans divided over whether this additional material genuinely strengthens Kylo Ren’s story or simply fills holes the movies should have handled themselves.
Both arguments are understandable. Supplemental comics can make the galaxy richer, but viewers shouldn’t necessarily need additional reading to understand major emotional beats involving one of a trilogy’s central characters.
Still, for Kylo Ren fans, this is exactly the kind of material many wanted after The Last Jedi. It lets fans spend time with Supreme Leader Kylo Ren instead of treating that chapter of his life as a quick stop on the road back to Ben Solo.
And that could make another viewing of The Rise of Skywalker hit a little differently. Knowing more about what Kylo experienced after taking control of the First Order adds context to the angry, conflicted character we meet in the movie and gives his eventual rejection of the dark side a more complete path.
It doesn’t rewrite The Rise of Skywalker, and it won’t suddenly settle every argument surrounding the movie. But Star Wars has always grown beyond the films through comics, novels, animation, and games.
In this case, Star Wars: The Fall of Kylo Ren is getting the chance to explore a fascinating chapter of Kylo Ren and Ben Solo’s story that deserved more attention the first time around.
