Star Wars: Every Jedi Who Turned To The Dark Side

8. Ben Solo

Count Dooku Jedi
Lucasfilm

Ben Solo was the First Knight of the Knights of Ren, Supreme Leader of the First Order, and he murdered a whole temples' worth of Luke Skywalker's Padawans. All before the age of forty! Ben Solo was definitely an accomplished young dark Force user. But there was a time when he was a young Padawan himself.

So what happened to Ben? At a young age, he started hearing a voice in his mind. The voice comforted him, warned him of dangers, told him secrets, but it also fed on Ben's insecurities. The voice told Ben that he was weak and couldn't survive alone. Okay, the voice turned out to be a ghost Palpatine, but nobody would've guessed that!

Ben later went to train with his uncle Luke at the new Jedi temple. He was clearly the most talented and influential of Luke’s students. At some point, an enigmatic Force user called Snoke befriended Ben. Snoke was a Dark Force user looking to take advantage of the powerful young student.

Luke sensed the growing darkness in Ben and decided to confront him about it. When he arrived in Ben's room, he found the boy sleeping. Luke reached out with the Force and probed Ben's mind and future. Total violation of Ben's privacy, but it gets worse. When Luke didn't like what he saw, he wanted to kill Ben for a brief moment. As if the boy's fate was already sealed. It was a mistake, and Luke knew this, but it was a mistake that cost the entire Skywalker clan.

Ben witnessed his uncle, a lightsaber is drawn and ready to murder him in his sleep, and he thought, you know what? Forget this. He collapsed a building on top of Luke, destroyed Luke's temple, and killed most of Luke's students. This was, admittedly, not a cool move on Ben's part, but can we all agree that Luke didn't learn much from the fall of the first Jedi Temple?

In this post: 
Star Wars
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

John is a teacher and writer living in Texas. He spends far too much time watching Star Trek. Check out more if his work at artofnarrative.com