Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Rise of Kylo Ren #1!
Star Wars has just hinted that Palpatine was really the one who destroyed Luke Skywalker's Jedi Temple, not Kylo Ren. Ben Solo's fall to the dark side is one of the greatest mysteries of the sequel trilogy. How did the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker's star pupil, become a force for evil in the galaxy?
Star Wars: The Last Jedi began to reveal the truth, with Luke finally admitting to Rey that he had sensed the dark side in his nephew. In a moment's weakness, the great Jedi Master had triggered his lightsaber over Ben's sleeping body; Ben awoke at that moment, and defended himself. Luke survived the conflict, and blamed himself for mishandling Ben, almost murdering his nephew, and causing the deaths of all his students. But something about that story just didn't add up; how did Ben move from an act of self-defense, to slaughtering the rest of the Jedi?
Marvel's The Rise of Kylo Ren, a new miniseries written by Charles Soule and with art by Will Sliney, reveals that Ben Solo had help; and it looks to be Emperor Palpatine himself.
Palpatine Responsible For The Destruction Of Luke's Temple?
The comic is set shortly after the destruction of the Jedi Temple, with a distraught Ben Solo fleeing the scene, pursued by three students who had been offworld when the tragedy happened. But the truth of it all is revealed in a series of flashbacks. According to these scenes, Ben successfully defended himself from Luke's attack, and in fact he believed that he had killed his uncle. The chaos of it all - and, presumably, the various shockwaves in the Force - seem to have awoken the slumbering Jedi, as the lights are on in the Temple. But Ben didn't attack them; instead, in the immediate aftermath of Luke's death, a devastating Force Storm blasted from the heavens and obliterated the Jedi Temple. Ben had no idea it was coming, and was blasted off his feet.
The comic carefully avoids stating who was responsible for the Force Storm, but it's reasonable to assume that it was Palpatine. All through the battle with his uncle, Ben is encouraged by a disturbing, dark side voice; when he flees, the same voice coaxes him on his way. This corresponds perfectly with recent trailers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which show the Emperor claiming responsibility for Kylo Ren's corruption. "My boy," he declares, in a voice that alternates between his own and those of Supreme Leader Snoke and Darth Vader, "I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head." There's no reason to disbelieve this assertion, so Palpatine was most likely present in these scenes; that means he was probably the source of the Force Storm.
Did Luke Actually Attack Ben Solo - Or Palpatine?
Of course, all this raises a disturbing question; is it possible that the entire tragedy was precipitated because Palpatine allowed Luke to sense his presence? Darth Sidious has always been a master of manipulation, and in the prequels he was able to conceal his darkness from even Jedi as powerful as Master Yoda. Presumably he had been working on Ben Solo for quite some time, responsible for the deterioration in his relationship with Luke that led to this fateful night. It's not hard to imagine Darth Sidious deciding that the time was right to reveal himself.
If this is the case, it's no wonder Luke Skywalker forgot himself and activated his lightsaber. Luke may be the Great Redeemer of Star Wars, but even he has never dared dream of redeeming Palpatine. Suddenly exposed to a depth of malevolence and evil he had only sensed once before in his life, when he stood in the Emperor's Throne Room, Luke would naturally trigger his lightsaber and stand ready to defend himself. And then Ben Skywalker awoke, and events unfurled exactly as the Emperor had planned, leading to Luke's defeat. Notice that the attack on the Jedi Temple happens when Luke is beaten, and when Ben is the only witness.
Ben Isn't As Committed To The Dark Side As Anakin
There's a striking contrast between The Rise of Kylo Ren and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. In the latter case, Palpatine seduced Anakin Skywalker to the dark side and used him as a key agent in the destruction of the Jedi Order. Under the Emperor's orders, Anakin led the attack on the Jedi Temple, and was personally responsible for slaughtering countless friends and allies, and even murdering the Younglings. He took an almost-irreversible step along the path of the dark side.
But Ben Solo's situation was different. He was the victim of circumstance, and in this whole sequence he never made a conscious decision at all. He awoke to find his uncle standing over him with lightsaber ablaze, and defended himself - as anybody would have done. He was then guilty of nothing more than watching in horror as the Jedi Temple was obliterated by a force from the heavens. It's no wonder that, even when he became Kylo Ren, he still felt the pull of the light side; he never fell as far as his grandfather, Darth Vader.
Were Luke's Students Really All Killed?
Meanwhile, the visual effects shown in The Rise of Kylo Ren will be quite familiar to anyone who's read the old Expanded Universe. This appears to be a Force Storm, of the kind seen in the classic Dark Empire comics. It's worth remembering that, while Dark Empire is non-canon, Lucasfilm don't seem to have changed the rules of the Star Wars galaxy at all; Force powers have even been lifted from the Expanded Universe, including the doppelganger power used by Luke in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. If this was indeed one of the Emperor's Force Storms, though, then it raises the disturbing possibility that not all Luke's Jedi were killed. In Dark Empire, these destructive maelstroms also served as the core of a wormhole. Palpatine could have killed any Jedi he believed he couldn't shape, and stolen the Younglings.
This possibility shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, because canonically Palpatine has been stealing Force-sensitive children for decades. In The Clone Wars season 2, the Jedi Council discovered that the Sith were using the bounty hunter Cad Bane to surreptitiously kidnap Force-sensitive children from across the galaxy. George Mann's Star Wars: Myths & Fables subtly hinted that Darth Vader himself kidnapped children during the Dark Times. And the Jedi: Fallen Order game revealed that one broken Jedi Padawan had been transformed into one of Vader's Inquisitors, but was silent about the fate of the Younglings she was trying to protect when she was caught. The Emperor's purpose in all this has never been clear, but it's entirely possible he chose to take those he believed he could shape to his will.
