J.J. Abrams Says The Rise of Skywalker Will Keep the Mystery Behind the Knights of Ren

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker might be featuring the return of the Knights of Ren after the group's brief introduction in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, however, director J.J. Abrams warns Star Wars fans that they shouldn't really expect to get personal with Kylo Ren's (Adam Driver) henchmen.

Speaking in an interview with Esquire to help promote his new Star Wars movie, Abrams opens up about the elusive Knights of Ren. Though the filmmaker is excited to show more of the group, the Star Wars director says that fans won't see the Knights of Ren unmasked in The Rise of Skywalker.

Sure, Abrams might have wanted to feature more of the Knights of Ren after their short appearance in The Force Awakens, but the director also understands that one of the key features of Kylo Ren's lackeys is the mystery that surrounds the warriors.

"They're characters that, when we came up with them in Force Awakens and had very brief sighting of them, it was something that we had a lot of ideas of sort of further adventures with them, backstory, you know, and all sorts of things that were not the focus of the central story, and never made it into the movie," Abrams says. "And Episode VIII, The Last Jedi, didn't address that, at all, and it just allowed for us to bring them back in. I mean, they're best kept more mysterious than familiar, which is just to say there aren't going to be a lot of scenes with them taking their masks off and hanging out and eating sandwiches, but it felt like I definitely wanted to see more of them than we had, and I felt happy that we got a chance to do that in this movie."

We hope that The Rise of Skywalker reveals the important parts of the narrative behind the Knights of Ren. What kind of group are the Knights of Ren? What place do they have in the First Order? What kind of leadership does Kylo Ren display when he's with the Knights of Ren?

Right now we know very little about the group, and most of the information comes from novels and other supplementary material in the franchise. We hope that The Rise of Skywalker will be able to reveal more about the Knights of Ren on the big screen.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premieres December 20, 2019.

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