As the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker looms closer, concept artist Christian Alzmann has taken to Instagram with a relic from the Sequel Trilogy’s early years of development.
The newly shared concept art reveals an unused design for Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren. And while the outfit certainly seems in line with the eventual characterization of Ben Solo as a Darth Vader wannabe, Alzmann’s post also rightly observes that the getup has a little more “bounty hunter flare” to it than the costume ultimately used in the films.
It feels like an eternity ago that Star Wars fans were touting the heavily circulated theory that the mysterious masked villain from the Force Awakens trailer was actually Luke Skywalker in disguise. Of course, the film itself would eventually shut down this and other speculation, before The Last Jedi found plenty more ways to subvert popular expectations a couple of years later.
Now we’re less than two months away from witnessing the conclusion to the Skywalker Saga, and while Kylo famously destroyed his mask in the opening minutes of his last film, The Rise of Skywalker will see the return of this familiar headgear, albeit with some fracture lines across the surface to show where it had to be repaired.
Given all the blood that Kylo has on his hands at this point, the chances of him living to see the end of the Sequel Trilogy are looking pretty slim, even if he does get the last-minute redemption that many fans are now predicting. If the speculation has it right, then we’ll find out if Ben can at least leave us on a heroic note when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters on December 20th.