If you left the theater still confused over a bunch of unanswered questions in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, then the movie’s Visual Dictionary is your friend. The tie-in book reveals a lot of extra factual information about the characters and the world of the film that really helps tie the story together. For instance, it’s told us that Jannah is Lando’s daughter, how Rey fixed the Skywalker lightsaber and the true names of the Knights of Ren.
Here’s another interesting revelation that helps fill out the timeline of the Sequel Trilogy, though. The Visual Dictionary also clarifies how long Luke Skywalker was training his nephew Ben Solo for, before everything went wrong. Leia sent her son to Luke’s Jedi Academy at the tender age of 10. The same year this happened was also when Rey was born, which confirms that Rey is a decade younger than her nemesis/love interest.
Thirteen years later, the Jedi temple was burned to the ground on the night that Luke confronted Ben while he slept (as seen in flashback in The Last Jedi). Six years after that, the events of The Force Awakens took place and the First Order’s Starkiller Base was destroyed. TLJ takes place immediately after TFA while Rise of Skywalker occurs a year later.
So, to run through the characters’ ages, Ben Solo was 23 when he was finally turned to the Dark Side by Snoke (or Emperor Palpatine). He was then 29 when we first meet him in TFA. Rey, meanwhile, was 19 years old when she leaves Jakku, becomes involved with the Resistance and encounters Ben, now going by Kylo Ren, for the first time.
The Dictionary also introduces a new dating system for the franchise. Typically, fans use BBY/ABY (Before/After the Battle of Yavin), but the book suggests the “Starkiller Incident” is the new hinging moment of the saga. For instance, The Force Awakens would take place in 0ASI instead of 34ABY.
Tell us, though, what unanswered questions still plague you about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker? Let us know in the comments section down below.