Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Theory - Is THIS Where The Knights Of Ren Have Been?

5. Who Are The Knights Of Ren?

The Knights of Ren were of course featured in the trailers for The Force Awakens as Kylo Ren's badass masked acolytes, and as such many expected them to have a significant, even pivotal role in the final film.

As it turned out, the Knights didn't physically appear in the movie beyond a brief showing in Rey's (Daisy Ridley) vision when she meets Maz Kanata (Lupita N'yongo), leaving fans to hope they'd be expanded upon in The Last Jedi.

But The Last Jedi came and went without paying the Knights much mind either, beyond fans theorising that they may have been the students who vanished along with Kylo Ren years prior, after he destroyed Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) Jedi Temple and killed most of the students within.

We know that the Knights are set to return in The Rise of Skywalker, but let's consider what we know for sure at present.

For starters, they're neither Sith nor Jedi, and though they followed Snoke (Andy Serkis) and Kylo Ren's orders, they're not in fact members of the First Order.

Given that we only see them wielding guns and blunt weapons in the vision, it's possible the Knights aren't Force-sensitive - and therefore not Luke's students - though at this point we're getting back into conjecture territory.

And so, with the little concrete knowledge we have of the Knights in mind, let's dig in and consider where their loyalty lies going into The Rise of Skywalker...