Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren / YMMV

Base-Breaking Character: Ren. Either he's a surprisingly creepy and menacing villain or he's very hard to take seriously thanks to never wearing a shirt and looking too much like Jeffrey Epstein.
Epileptic Trees:
- What exactly was the incident involving Luke and Snoke that Ben mentioned upon meeting up with the latter?
- Snoke is shown telepathically communicating with Ben when Ben was still a child. When did the two first meet? And how could Snoke have mystified Ben so much to make him want to continue speaking with Snoke?
Fan-Disliked Explanation : Some fans didn't like how issue #1 presented Ben's destruction of the Jedi Temple. Previous works treated it like Ben killed all the other students deliberately, but this issue shows him lashing out in rage over his confrontation with Luke and doing it unintentionally — and it's also possible that he was only a witness to events that were caused by Snoke or Palpatine, who struck while Luke was incapacitated, rather than making Ben the perpetrator. These fans feel the changes rob his fall of agency or view it as a cheap way of revising his backstory to make him more sympathetic.
Fanfic Fuel: The fourth issue strongly suggests that Rey and Ben's Force bond existed long before The Last Jedi, as Rey is able to sense Ben killing Ren. For fans, this raises the question of whether they were able to sense any other significant and/or emotionally-heightened events the other was experiencing over the years, without realizing what it meant.
Fashion-Victim Villain: Snoke's at it again with bizarre clothing choices; his green bathrobe-esque outfit, paired with what looks like a newsboy cap with long bangs, doesn't exactly scream "Dark Lord". He may want to appear unintimidating to Ben, in which case he hit the nail on the head.
I Knew It!:
- Before this series debuted, Ben Solo fans theorized that he didn't murder his fellow Jedi trainees following his confrontation with Luke and that there was more to the story. Come the first issue, the Ambiguous Situation surrounding the temple's destruction allows for interpretations like Ben only witnessing the deaths or killing without premeditation.
- Fans had also speculated since The Last Jedi that Snoke was lying about having created Rey and Kylo Ren's Force Bond, and that it had instead already existed between them prior to the events of the films. They're proven correct in issue four: Rey (13 at the time) senses Ben's (then 23) fall to the Dark Side through their bond, saying it "feels... cold."
It's Short, So It Sucks!: Some fans felt that a mere 4 issue mini-series was too brief to tell the story of Ben Solo becoming Kylo Ren with the depth they wanted.
Narm:
- After years of speculation of what or where the surname "Ren" originates, the book reveals that it's another word for "lightsaber", essentially meaning that Ben/Kylo named himself "Kylo Lightsaber". It's worse with the Knights' leader, whose name is just Ren; at least Kylo can call himself by his first name as opposed to just "Lightsaber". Mind you, "The Knights of the Lightsaber" actually sounds pretty badass.
- Snoke's bizarre outfit takes the tension out of some of his scenes, especially since his hood somewhat resembles a hairstyle with bangs.
- Ren, the original leader of the Knights of Ren, has casual dialogue that clashes with seriousness of all other characters, never wears a shirt even when it's snowing, and takes off his helmet to reveal his face looks near-identical to Jeffrey Epstein's.
Nightmare Fuel:
- There's something chilling about seeing Snoke greet Ben in an almost fatherly manner when the fallen Jedi arrives at his hideout. Not to mention the hideout itself is littered with the remains of its former inhabitants, who were killed by the plants they themselves planted in an attempt to fight off the dark side. We get to learn more about these plants in The High Republic, and it isn't pretty.
- Despite the rather Narm-y nature of the character, there's still something very unsettling about Ren. His shirtlessness gives a good look at his hideously scarred form, and he's revealed to look like just a normal guy underneath the mask. How does this normal person have the ability to be so gruesomely injured and yet not care one bit?
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Due to the comic's short length, it skims over interesting things like Luke actually training his Jedi students (which we never really saw in the Sequel Trilogy), and Ben, Luke and Lor San Tekka travelling around the galaxy looking for Force artifacts and lore.
- Although the focus of the comic is Ben Solo's fall to the Dark Side, it never goes into much depth about his exact motives, skimming over things like the pressure to live up to his family's legacy, why he trusted and confided in Snoke over everyone else, his strained relationship with his parents (and thus why he felt he couldn't go to them after the incident with Luke) and why he would support the First Order despite being raised under the New Republic. It completely skips over most of his early life; it jumps from Ben meeting the Knights of Ren as a child, to the night he fell to the Dark Side at the age of 23, and then just focuses on Ben joining the Knights of Ren, with little detail as to what happened in the interim. This could be partly because the series is only four issues long, or more likely to give room for other creators when the time comes.
- Despite Kylo's fixation on emulating Darth Vader being a huge part of his character, the comic barely even mentions Vader, let alone focuses on Ben's feelings about his grandfather and why he looks to him as a role model. It sticks out because according to other Expanded Universe stories, Ben never knew he was Vader's grandson until shortly before he fell to the Dark Side; his family had kept this from him all his life and his mother is forced to come clean after being publicly outed as Vader's daughter, but we never find out how Ben, Luke and the other apprentices reacted to this and how it fed into Ben's Face–Heel Turn since the bulk of the story is set immediately after Ben knocks Luke out.

YMMV / Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren

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