We all know that Kylo Ren was turned to the Dark Side by Supreme Leader Snoke/Emperor Palpatine, with the villain(s) using the grandson of Vader to destroy Luke Skywalker’s revived Jedi Order. What we’ve just learned, though, is that this was part of a much bigger operation by the First Order to get revenge on their old enemies in the most personal way: by corrupting their children. At least, that’s what The Art of… book for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has revealed.
As per CBR, the tie-in behind-the-scenes tome features some fascinating details on a deleted subplot from the closer to the Skywalker saga. As co-writer Chris Terrio explains in the book, Ben Solo’s descent into darkness was just one facet of a “long-term plan” that also included Jannah, who was originally explicitly spelled out on screen as the daughter of Lando Calrissian.
“The first people that the First Order targeted were leaders of the old Rebellion; they went for their kids,”Terrio explains. “They went for Lando’s daughter. They went for Ben Solo, which begins to make more sense when you look at the wider context of their machinations — the long-term plan.”
It’s also revealed that the First Order deliberately targeted the offspring of the leaders of the Rebellion as part of a fiendish plot titled Project Resurrection. This was the name given to the wide-scale capturing of thousands of children from across the galaxy to be reconditioned as Stormtroopers. As we know from Finn and Jannah’s experiences, the FO wiped the kids’ memories of their original lives and trained them as loyal soldiers.
What’s more, an additional revelation is that Finn was supposed to have met a long-lost sibling in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which would have helped him reconnect with who he was before he was taken by the First Order. He would have found this family member stranded on a garbage planet (similar to The Clone Wars‘ Lotho Minor). And, yet again, we’re left wondering why none of these interesting concepts made it into the film itself.