SPECULATION Why Did Ben Solo Turn to the Dark Side?

Did Snoke fear Luke himself or his ability to train jedis ?

Did he turn Solo for himself or as a weapon to reach Luke ?

 

Not sure if this is relevant to this thread but anyway...
I'm wondering whether the Force stopped speaking to Luke after the destruction of his Jedi Order.
VII was of course called The Force Awakens. And we know that the idea is that the Force was dormant but then the dark side awoke through Kylo Ren and the light awoke through Rey.

We also know that from the PT, when the Dark Side emerged the Jedi's "ability to use the Force" was diminished. And that the Dark Side clouds the future.
What if this is actually why Luke went off to Ahch-To? He was Force blind? He felt he had failed but he also didn't have any answers.
So he had to find the "holy grounds" of the Jedi - the first Jedi Temple, a place that might have some strong connection to the Force.
Luke looks prepared for Rey's arrival of course but I doubt he stood on that spot every day for X amount of years.
Clearly he felt the awakening as well.

Not sure where else to go with this thought at the moment so will let it hang here for a bit and see what you chaps (and chapesses) come up with.

 

Kathleen Kennedy: "One of the most interesting things about Kylo Ren is that he’s young. So often, villains in stories are damaged, troubled, older characters. To bring a character into Star Wars as a villain who’s only 30-years-old is interesting. It takes advantage of a troubled teenage life and a back-story that we don’t know much about." (Star Wars Insider magazine #162 January 2016 issue – released: December 22, 2015)

 

hmmm, I don't think a 30 years old is young. He is an adult. Ok, maybe compared to an 150 years old he is young.

 

It is interesting to hear Kathy Kennedy saying that Kylo is a young villain when we do know that Anakin fell to the Dark side when he was barely 22 years old. However, we do not know yet the circumstances of his "troubled teenage life" yet. At least with Anakin, we know he was a brilliant Jedi knight leading his troops and winning battles in The Clone Wars before he joined the Emperor as Darth Vader.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 1, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 1, 2016 ---

I think the article makes sense, but it’s missing maybe the main component of it: Leia never coming to terms to her heritage. In my opinion, it was of the biggest flaws from ROTJ: having only Luke witnessing their father’s redemption back to the light side of the Force.

For Leia, being told about it wasn’t the same as seeing it for herself, and seeing it for herself was something she had not experienced. Aside of it, Leia had more reasons to hate Vader than Luke and the truth about her origin was a hard hit for her. Had she come to terms with the truth of being daughter of Anakin Skywalker, who once was Darth Vader but then was redeemed and died as Anakin Skywalker, telling the truth to her son would have come naturally, as well as revealing the truth to the rest of the galaxy. From reading “Bloodline”, political turmoil aside, the main message we get is: Acknowledge the demons from your past, learn to live with them or they will come back to haunt you.

It will be definitely interesting to see how the ST portrays the way Snoke approached Ben and starting pulling him to the Dark Side.

We don't know yet who is Snoke, but as I was re-reading Life: Debt I couldn't help but notice the way Palpatine approaches Gallius Rax is quite similar - though obviously on a different light - to the way the Chancellor approaches young Anakin.

I'm not saying Rax is Snoke - I'm definitely open to whatever identity they decide to give Snoke - but one thing I do wonder is who he did approach Ben. If Ben felt at one point betrayed by his parents by not telling him the truth about his heritage, someone as Snoke could have represented someone honest that he could trust.

 

Pablo Hidalgo was claiming after Bloodline came out that people still don't know what Ben reacted to and when and how his fall started.




(The bird he is referring to is Vergere in Legends/the old EU. Vergere tortured Jacen Solo after the death of Solo's younger brother Anakin. Anakin's death was a component in the making of Jacen into Darth Caedus.)

 

Really cool article, and probably the direction they're heading. That being said, I'm a fan of the theory that (SPOILERS??) Luke's other students turned on him after finding out that he was related to Darth Vader and Ben actually defended Luke by slaughtering them; and that - along with the information - was the final turning point for Ben.

 

I do like this theory and it would be interesting and explains why Luke is so hesitant to return and fight his nephew.
But the sentence of Han stands against this when he said 'one boy destroyed it all'. Or Han didn't know the full truth. Maybe after the revelation that Luke is Vader's son, one of the older students prepared an attack against Luke, but Luke refused to fight them. Ben organized the help of some friends to fight and kill the students before they would kill Luke. That would be indeed an interesting twist.

 

it had never occurred to me that this could even be a possibility, but now it's interesting to think about. Han says one boy, an apprentice, destroyed it all ~ and the assumption is that it's Ben (it's hard not to assume that). there's wiggle room there that it could have been someone else and that Ben fell as a result of the incident.

finding out your mentor is the son of Darth Vader (and his nephew is his apprentice) might have been very disconcerting for the other pupils. enough to provoke a mutiny? possibly? and Ben went overboard in trying to control it?

feels unlikely, but could make a really interesting story!

 

yeah, I always wondered what really happens after Bloodline novel and TFA. I mean if Ben was so schocked about the Vader reveal, why would he then turn to the dark side and do the exact same and just kill Luke's students? There must be more and a reason why he goes against them.

 

Leia felt the dark side. She was a helicopter-parent. Ben -- like all kids --- hated it. Snoke promised him riches and untild power and he took it to get away...he simply got carried away. It's like in "Pinnochio" from 1941 (Disney) where the lead gets carried away and learns his leassion after hacing his eyes opened.

 

Bloodline gives the impression that Leia was the opposite of a helicopter parent, at least while Ben was with Luke. I really doubt Ben had any interest in riches--he seems far more interested in fulfilling this destiny of finishing Vader's mission (whatever he thinks it is).

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 5, 2016, Original Post Date: Sep 5, 2016 ---

Very intriguing idea! We know from Bloodline that the Senate utterly turned on Leia (with the exception of a few close friends and the future Resistance members) after finding out she was Vader's daughter, and only suffered--barely--her presence still among them because of her war hero status and being the adopted daughter of Bail Organa. But her name was pretty much mud after that.

So it makes sense that a similar thing might happen to Luke. He doesn't have the Organa family legacy behind him or a decades-long public service record, and because he has pretty much retired from the public eye, people seem to have begun to doubt his role in the Rebellion. In Bloodline there is a little bit of speculation among the Centrists that Luke isn't actually a hero:

To this day, they've never adequately explained what happened to the first Death Star. Yes, we all know the big story, Luke Skywalker, single starfighter blah blah blah, but honestly, does that sound credible to you?
​

And I know as a parent I might have second thoughts about my child being trained by the son of Darth Vader--with no other person there to oversee or report on him, Jedi or not. And I can understand how the students too might have felt betrayed if they didn't know.

The part about Ben defending Luke seems less likely, as @FN-3263827 says. But it's interesting to think that there might be more circumstances that we don't know about yet, or have only seen "from a certain point of view."

 

Wel what I mean by that is she tried to keep him from going dark by sending him to Luke...as in she was trying to do what was best for him whether he wanted it or not
.

 

a helicopter parent is a parent who hovers constantly over their child, managing their every activity and interaction.

i think it's pretty safe to assume that no parent in Ben's life ever behaved this way ~ hahaha

 

Yes that's, uh, plane to see.

*tumbleweed*