Until the release of Daisy Ridley’s Rey movie at a yet-to-be-determined date, The Rise of Skywalker remains the last stop when one is going through the Star Wars movies in order. Set one year after the events of The Last Jedi, Episode IX showed Kylo Ren still leading The First Order after killing Supreme Leader Snoke, but we don’t see much of him actually commanding the military movement. Well, a comic book series is on the way to explore this chapter of Kylo’s life, and the announcement of this project brings some welcome news for those who romantically paired him and Rey in their heads, a.k.a. Reylo shippers.
Marvel Is Publishing Star Wars: Legacy Of Vader
Marvel Comics announced today that writer Charles Soule is teaming with illustrator Luke Ross for Star Wars: Legacy of Vader, a limited comic book series following Kylo Ren in the year between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. The series will explore Kylo’s “enduring connection” to Darth Vader, a.k.a. his maternal grandfather, and how the actions of the man previously known as Anakin Skywalker guide Kylo’s choices at a time when he’s long since eschewed his Ben Solo identity. This will include Kylo traveling to Vader’s castle on Mustafar and visiting Tatooine, where his grandaddy and uncle Luke both grew up.
Soule, whose many Star Wars writing credits include Marvel’s 2017 Darth Vader series and Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren, which depicted Ben’s fall to the Dark Side, had this to say about Legacy of Vader’s premise:
Kylo is truly lost at this particular moment. In a very short span of time, he's faced two of his most significant mentors in combat (one of whom is his uncle), killed his own father, almost killed his mother, stolen control of a galaxy-level military that he has no idea how he'll use, and of course, found a deep connection with another Force-user named Rey. All of that is swirling around in his emotional matrix, making him deeply unstable, angry, frustrated... dangerous. He's looking for any form of guidance he can get — even if he won't admit it — and so he turns to just about the only thing he's got left, the legacy of his grandfather, the Sith Lord Darth Vader.
You’ll notice Charles Soule mentioning Kylo Ren’s “deep connection” with Rey. On the surface, that could just be referring to how their lives intersected in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, from that duel on Starkiller Base to when they fought Snoke’s Praetorian Guard. But additional information supplied about Legacy of Vader reveals it goes even deeper than that.
Why Reylo Shippers Should Be Excited About This
A segment of the Star Wars fanbase were shipping Rey and Kylo Ren together stretching back to when The Force Awakens kicked off the Sequel Trilogy in 2015, but it was the two of them sharing a kiss before Kylo died in The Rise of Skywalker that really sent them into high gear. Granted, there were other fans who didn’t like the kiss, though director J.J. Abrams hit back against the idea that Rey and Kylo purely had a brother-sister dynamic. Thanks to the announcement of Star Wars: Legacy of Vader, we know for a fact that, at least where Kylo was concerned, he definitely had romantic feelings for Rey.
Mark Panicccia, a senior editor at Marvel Comics whose workload includes Star Wars titles, went on X (formerly known as Twitter) to share a spoiler-free snippet of the Legacy of Vader #1 script detailing the events of Kylo Ren’s recent past when the comic book series begins. That includes:
Fell in love with another Force user named Rey, who subsequently rejected him.
Considering that Marvel’s Star Wars comics are part of the official canon, then we can officially scrap this brother-sister idea for good. Kylo definitely has a romantic interest in Rey. Admittedly, it still remains to be officially clarified if Rey truly felt the same way when Kylo died, because in the Rise of Skywalker novelization, that smooch was described as a kiss of “gratitude, acknowledgement of their connection, celebration they’d found each other at last.” However, that same book also shared their touching last words, so a stronger argument could be made for her having a romantic interest too.
Star Wars: Legacy of Vader #1 comes out on February 5, 2025 online and at your local comic book store. Keep yourself entertained in the meantime by streaming all sorts of Star Wars content with your Disney+ subscription and looking through our guide of upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows.
