5 'Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker' theories that explain Kylo Ren's new mask

Other than using the Dark Side of the Force to conquer the galaxy, Kylo Ren is also famous for throwing hissy-fits. But, in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, it seems like the consequences of one of his tantrums will be a major plot point. Kylo broke his helmet into pieces in The Last Jedi, but, footage from The Rise of Skywalker shows that the helmet is back. Plus, new images of the re-formed helmet have given fans a closer look at its design along with Kylo’s new formal title as “Supreme Leader.”

But, what’s really going on with this helmet? Is Kylo just using Dark Side super-glue to put his old helmet back together? Or is there a bigger twist here.

Speculative spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ahead.

Last week, a new promotional poster for The Rise of Skywalker depicted Kylo Ren wearing his new veiny and cracked badass helmet. Around the same time, images started popping up on Reddit and elsewhere showing-off toy versions of the new helmet. Here are two big takeaways.

1. Kylo Ren is 100 percent called “Supreme Leader Kylo Ren”; which honestly isn’t that big of a revelation since he assumed that title at the end of The Last Jedi. But still!
2. In both the new art and the leaked toy images, Kylo Ren’s helmet has red cracks running across it, which seems to correlate with the images from the first Rise of Skywalker trailer when we saw the helmet being “fixed.”

And here’s the newest image of an electronic mask toy, which, will presumably let you talk like Kylo Ren.

Okay, so, as we’ve already known, Kylo Ren has a new mask that might be his old mask. But know that we’ve seen it, what could it actually mean? Here are five explanations for why the new Kylo Ren mask looks the way it looks.

5. He literally fixed his old mask

The simplest explanation is also the most obvious one: At some point in The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren will weld his broken mask back together. The trailer wants you to think that. The fact it’s a broken mask with cracks also suggests this is the easy explanation. But, there are a few problems with that theory …

4. He had multiple masks

Because Kylo Ren broke his mask in the elevator of Supreme Leader Snoke’s flagship in The Last Jedi, the fact that he somehow recovered the pieces is a fairly dubious proposition. In The Last Jedi, that ship, complete with the broken pieces of the helmet, was destroyed when Admiral Holdo hyperspace rammed the shit out of it. So, what did Kylo Ren do? Run to that elevator and scoop up the pieces of his helmet before getting into an escape pod?

How about this: Maybe he had back-up masks, and the one we see in Rise of Skywalker is one of those back-ups.

3. It’s a new mask

So, when you think about how hard it would have been for Kylo Ren to recover the broken pieces of his original helmet, a neater explanation for the new mask is that it’s just a new mask. The reason it has cracks isn’t that it’s made from pieces of the old mask, but instead because it’s been hastily constructed.

2. This mask is from a flashback or time travel

Here’s something: There’s not a single shot of Kylo Ren in either of the new trailers that shows him wearing the mask in the relative “present.” So, what does that mean? Maybe the mask we’re seeing in the promo art (and the toy) is an earlier version of Kylo’s mask. This version of the mask could be witnessed in flashbacks, or, you know, maybe time travel, if that ends up happening.

1. That’s not Kylo Ren

My personal favorite theory here is simple. The reason why the mask is so messed-up and weird is because that’s not Kylo Ren wearing it. For some reason, someone wants everyone to think they’re Kylo Ren. And look, whoever is making that helmet in the trailer is wearing some kind of fur-coat, that seems decidedly un-Kylo.

So, is someone else impersonating Kylo Ren? Is it one of the other Knights of Ren? For those who remember, a few months back, a rumor started flying around that Kylo Ren is fighting against the Knights of Ren in the first Rise of Skywalker trailer, and that a showdown between Kylo and his evil buddies is a huge part of the film.

Either way, if there is a faux-Kylo Ren running around in the movie, it would kind of be better than Kylo just getting a new helmet. Kylo Ren versus Rey again will be dope. But what about Kylo versus Kylo? That’s something we all deserve to see.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — Kylo Fights Some Posers is out everywhere on December 20, 2019.