‘Star Wars’ fans not all that interested in the idea of a Ben Solo prequel series

Disney and Lucasfilm are busy strip-mining every era of the Skywalker saga for spin-offs, so it seems like a no-brainer that one day we’ll start to see shows establishing the sequel trilogy. Star Wars: Resistance even already touched on this, with the series beginning before The Force Awakens and ending up leading into The Rise of Skywalker. But what about a prequel show exploring one of the most interesting sequel trilogy characters: Adam Driver’s Ben Solo/Kylo Ren?

Much of Ben Solo’s story has already been told in flashbacks and exposition, but seeing his childhood on screen would fill in a lot of the blanks in how he ended up turning his back on his family in favor of the Dark Side. But fans on r/StarWars don’t seem to be convinced.

Some say the conclusion to his story in The Rise of Skywalker was so bad they couldn’t get invested in a prequel about him, others that it’d be way too much of a downer given how it ends, and still others point out that we’ve already seen his backstory in The Rise of Kylo Ren comics series.

But the biggest hurdle might be logistical. Adam Driver is so distinctive it’s difficult to imagine anyone else in the role, and we doubt he’ll return to Star Wars anytime soon.

Plus, any backstory would heavily rely on CGI de-aging and deepfaking Carrie Fisher’s Leia and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo. And while they’ve made incredible progress with Luke in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, a full show of deepfaked characters would just seem eerie.

So we’re with the fans on this. Let’s leave a Ben Solo show in the bad ideas pile.