Adam Driver’s portrayal of Ben Solo — better known as Kylo Ren — remains one of the most compelling throughlines of the sequel trilogy. His internal war with the legacy of Darth Vader and the external pressure exerted by figures like Supreme Leader Snoke created a layered, often tragic antagonist. In 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, Ben ultimately rejects the dark side, rescuing Rey at the cost of his own life.
That sacrifice might have felt like the end of his story, but it proved not to be the final word — and not only because the character later appears in a dedicated comic series.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Driver said he’d been eager to return to Star Wars since 2021. He explained that if the project paired a strong director with a compelling story, he would be willing to come back — he genuinely enjoyed inhabiting the character.
Driver later developed a post-Rise of Skywalker concept with filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. Taken at face value it sounds improbable — Ben Solo dies — yet Star Wars has a history of unexpected returns: from Force manifestations to characters like Darth Maul surviving against the odds in expanded-canon stories. The franchise’s elasticity made the idea not entirely outlandish.
Driver, Soderbergh, and writer Rebecca Blunt developed a detailed treatment and presented it to Lucasfilm leadership — Kathleen Kennedy, Cary Beck, and Dave Filoni. The studio responded positively and brought on Scott Z. Burns to draft the screenplay; Driver later described the resulting script as among the most exciting he’d read in the franchise.
However, the project collapsed when it reached Disney’s higher executives. According to Driver, Bob Iger and Alan Bergman declined to move forward because they couldn’t reconcile Ben Solo’s return with the established story. The proposed film, reportedly titled The Hunt for Ben Solo, was shelved.
Soderbergh lamented that while he relished imagining the movie, audiences would ultimately never see it realized.
For fans hoping for more sequels or epilogues to the sequel trilogy, the news is a disappointment. There are other entries on the slate — including Shawn Levy’s Starfighter, expected in 2027 — but for devotees of Kylo Ren, the cancellation is a bittersweet reminder that not every promising concept reaches the screen.
Source: Polygon
