ben solo was the son of rebel alliance heroes leia organa and han solo. as the grandson of anakin skywalker, the chosen one, solo was powerful with the force from birth and was trained by his uncle luke skywalker alongside numerous other jedi, in an attempt to rebuild the jedi order. however, solo was slowly manipulated by snoke, the supreme leader of the first order and a powerful master of the dark side of the force, who made him believe that it was his destiny to succeed darth vader and finish what he started: wipe out the jedi order. thus, after luke sensed the darkness inside him and attempted to kill him in his sleep, solo turned to the dark side, adopting the kylo ren persona, and became the leader of a mysterious organization of force-wielding warriors called the knights of ren. alongside the knights, ren murdered all of luke's other students, although luke himself survived and exiled himself on ahch-to, and later became a high-ranking commander within the first order. in "", ren led an attack on a village on jakku in the search of a map that would lead the first order to luke, and captured resistance pilot poe dameron, who secretly gave the map to his droid bb-8, which was eventually found by the scavenger rey. although ren learned of this after interrogating poe with the force, the latter was liberated by the rogue stormtrooper finn, who eventually found bb-8 and rey and they all escaped from jakku aboard the "millenium falcon", along the way joining up with ren's father han solo and chewbacca, who agreed to take them to takodana, from where they could hand bb-8 over to the resistance. however, ren soon learned of this and led another attack on takodana to retrieve bb-8. although he failed and the first order was chased away by the resistance, ren instead captured rey, having sensed that she saw the map, and took her away for interrogation on starkiller base. however, ren failed to extract the information from her and his interrogation instead unlocked her force abilities. ren later killed his father to prove his allegiance to the dark side and was defeated by rey in a lightsaber duel, before being forced to evacuate due to the resistance destroying starkiller base.