The Real Reason Kylo Ren Repairs His Helmet In Rise Of Skywalker

With inner change sometimes comes outer change.

In The Last Jedi, the second installment of the most recent Star Wars trilogy, the villainous Kylo Ren lightsaber-slashes his way to a new position of power within the First Order: Supreme Leader, snatching the title from his former mentor Snoke after assassinating him in his throne room. As a symbolic gesture rejecting Snoke's influence over him well before that, Ren smashes his helmet, which is particularly notable given Snoke's insult:

The Skywalker saga-ending film The Rise of Skywalker sees Kylo exercising his new authority, and taking on a modified version of his old look. He has the helmet rebuilt from its pieces, inspired to do so after meeting Emperor Palpatine. The reworked headgear features jagged silver bits and red vein-like stripes running across it, evidence that the smashed parts got welded back together in a not-totally-precise way.

Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams said the imperfections are an intentional example of kintsukuroi, or "golden repair," which involves repairing broken pottery using visible, gold seams. The Japanese technique is particularly appropriate since Kylo Ren and Darth Vader's costumes are based on samurai garb. Abrams told Empire:

"Like that classic Japanese process of taking ceramics and repairing them [...] As fractured as Ren is, the mask becomes a visual representation of that. There's something about this that tells his history. His mask doesn't ultimately hide him and his behavior is revealed."

Kylo Ren actor Adam Driver likewise revealed the reason in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly that the helmet is meant to reflect Kylo Ren's inner conflicts. He said:

"He's a very unformed person, which is exciting to play and to have that be represented physically in a costume piece, or a lighting choice or, in this case, a helmet. It's a coming together, he's cherry-picked things he's looked at through his history and that he's decided he wants to claim for who he is. So it's a physical representation of how that character has grown."

Kylo Ren has certainly evolved over the course of the current Star Wars trilogy. He started an ambitious, temperamental young man who idolized his grandfather, Darth Vader. He killed his own father, Han Solo, because he was desperate for power. But he eventually becomes driven more by a sense of personal value.

Keep watching the video to see the real reason Kylo Ren repairs his helmet in Rise of Skywalker!

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