Alright here it is. What happened to Ben?

Here is my full (ie long), complete breakdown of what I think happened to him and why he’s currently stuck in the World Between Worlds. #bensololives

First I want to establish: What is the World Between Worlds?

Because this is a very powerful and mysterious area of the Force and there’s so much that we don’t know about it, but let’s look at what we do know. It’s been described as:

-A mystical plane in the Force that exists across time and space, linking all moments in time together. (TROS Visual Dictionary)
-A conduit through which the entire Force of the universe flows (Rebels)

-A twisted ribbon lining the perimeter of all reality that allows for transit to any point across the cosmos (TROS Visual Dictionary)
-A conduit between the living and the dead (Rebels)
-Beyond the veil (Rebels)

So we have 3 planes of existence, and the WBW is quite literally a world between the worlds of Realspace (the world of the living) and the Netherworld of the Force (the place “where souls ascend after their physical bodies die” - ie where the dead people are) It seems to be a

type of purgatory that one passes through after dying, on their way to the Netherworld.

We also know that people from both planes can travel into the WBW. We see Ezra (who is alive) enter into the WBW on Rebels, and we see Yoda (a Force ghost) also in the WBW.

Qui-Gon was also able to physically manifest on Mortis (a place directly related to the WBW) even though he can’t appear as a Force ghost elsewhere.

Let’s move on to TROS and what happened to Ben. I will go in order of events as much as possible.

In the TROS novel Luke, several times, kept telling Leia that it was time for her to pass on. Luke, who is one with the Force, would have knowledge of future events and what needs to be done. But Leia ignored him for quite a while.

(Seriously Luke this is bad timing she’s in the middle of a war here)

Right before she dies Luke tells her “Leia there is only one thing left to do” and she finally gives into him and reaches out to Ben to help him turn back to the light. Leia uses all of her energy to do this,

and we then see Leia die. But her body does not disappear yet, so she hasn’t yet become one with the Force. Where would Leia be after dying but before joining the Cosmic Force? She would be in an in-between place: the WBW.

Upon dying there was “a surge of welcome from Luke, who was not alone…” (TROS novel). So at this point she saw Luke and some unknown person or persons, who welcomed her.

(Sidenote: this novel set up a mystery that one or more people were with Luke when Leia died, but never revealed who. This implies, especially since there is a “…”, that it’s something that will be explored and revealed at a later point :))

Fast forward to Luke telling Rey about Leia’s vision when they’re on Ahch-To. Here is the full quote from the scene:

“It was the last night of her training. Leia told me that she had sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path. She surrendered her saber to me and

said that one day it would be picked up again by someone who would finish her journey. A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight. You’ll take both sabers to Exegol.”

Several things to break down in here:

1. Leia sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path so she quit training, probably thinking that if she doesn’t become a Jedi then he won’t die. But what we know from literature about prophecies and visions is that they’re usually tricky to decipher and often get

misread, and that no matter how much people try to avoid them they usually end up coming true anyway. So I believe that Leia thought this would prevent Ben’s death, but ultimately it did not.

Because the end of Leia’s Jedi path is not the end of her training, but the end of her life. That is quite literally the end of her path. And that is exactly what ends up happening. They die together. Leia doesn’t cause Ben’s death, it just occurs at the same time.

2. I don’t think Rey picking up Leia’s saber has anything to do with the prophecy. Leia’s path is her own, and the idea that Rey taking her saber would somehow finish her path and cause Ben’s death is way too literal.

Leia wasn’t going to become a Jedi, so she gave Luke her lightsaber so someone else could use it one day instead. This to me is completely unrelated to Ben’s death.

3. Luke then literally tells Rey “you’ll take both sabers to Exegol.” So just like earlier, when Luke was telling Leia that it was time to die and reach out to Ben, that it had to happen at that moment, Luke *knows things*.

He knows Rey will need two sabers, meaning he knows that Ben will be there and need the second one.

So let’s backtrack for one second. Why would Leia, after dying, not pass into the Netherworld of the Force at that point? Well I think that Luke, our resident Force ghost, who is part of the Force and who has been pulling the strings this entire time, and who

we know for a fact greeted Leia upon her death, told her what was going to happen to Ben. So then Leia would have held onto her lifeforce to wait for Ben and meet him in the WBW.

Moving on to Exegol. Ben gives all of his lifeforce to Rey and dies. So where would he have gone when he disappeared? Well we already established that he would have first passed through the WBW on his way to the Netherworld. Where Leia is currently waiting for him.

(Also can Luke and the mystery person(s) (Anakin?? Han???) also still be there please? Ben deserves nothing less than his entire family giving him a giant hug. Thanks.)

So here’s where I run into a slight problem about what actually saved Ben. This isn’t a bad thing. The “problem” is that there is more than one possibility, both of which work, that would have kept Ben in the WBW. The first option is that the dyad bond saved him.

The second is that Leia saved him, which would then also work in combination with the dyad bond. I’m definitely leaning towards this option, but I’m going to actually cover both of these.

Option 1: The dyad bond saved Ben.

It is established that Ben and Rey are “two that are one” in the Force. They literally share the same Force. So how could Ben pass into the Netherworld and become one with the Force when half of his Force still exists in the plane

of the living. That shouldn’t be possible. They can be separated with Ben being in the WBW because people from Realspace are able to enter the WBW. Those two planes are connected. So Rey and Ben’s Force should be able to exist in both of these places.

But the Netherworld is then on the other side of the WBW. These two planes do not touch. It can’t split that way. So after dying, Ben would get stuck in the WBW because Rey being alive is tethering him there.

In the novel we know that when Ben dies Rey feels like “half of her is missing”, but this doesn’t necessarily mean Ben is in the Netherworld. Because Rey felt the same thing when Ben fell down into the pit, which we know from the Visual Dictionary is where the vergence to

the WBW is located. In the book when Ben gets tossed in the pit it says “she’d vaguely sensed Ben falling, but it was like he’d fallen out of existence itself, leaving her carved out and broken.” So her feelings are basically the same in both of these instances.

So because of the dyad bond Ben is stuck in the WBW, and Leia had waited for him so that she could reunite with him there before passing on. When Leia’s body disappears Maz smiles because Leia, who has been dead for some time, finally was at peace and became one with the Force.

(Sidenote on the pit: I don’t think Ben went through the portal into the WBW when he fell down. In the novel it says he caught himself on an outcropping of rock. I think Ben was just very close to the vergence to the WBW, and it affects the area around it,

so now Rey can’t sense him anymore and feels broken. We know time on Ahch-To acts strangely because it has a vergence (TLJ Visual Dictionary), and “time and space became near meaningless in exotic space” (TROS novel when Ben is traveling to Exegol),

so the WBW vergence points seem to affect the areas around them, and Ben was *extremely* close to the gateway.)

Option 2: Leia saved Ben.

What if Ben is able to die and this just breaks the bond? Regular Force bonds are able to break in death (Although I don’t think those people share the same Force the same way Ben and Rey do.) We also know that the bond can be weakened because of

the novel. “Their connection had weakened when the Emperor stole their life-force.” In this case - what would keep Ben “alive”?

We’ve already established that Leia and Ben are both in the WBW right now. Well lifeforce transfer is a recurring theme of this movie, and Leia

could have given the last of her lifeforce to Ben the same way he had for Rey. The novel let’s us know that Rey learned how to do this from her Jedi texts, so Leia would have also learned it with her. Leia “sensed the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path.”

The end of Leia’s Jedi path is now her literally giving her life to her son upon his death. So Leia would now pass into the Netherworld, which is why we saw her body disappear at the same time as Ben’s. And then because of the dyad bond and now having regained lifeforce

from Leia, Ben would still be tethered to Rey and kept “alive” in the WBW for the same reasons I had already mentioned above.

Maz then smiles when Leia’s body disappears possibly for the same reason - because Leia had finally found peace, or more likely because Maz, who “knows the Force” could sense that Leia had just saved her son.

We now skip to the end of the movie. Rey is on Tatooine, where we see both Leia and Luke’s Force ghosts. And Ben Solo is very notably missing. Because you can’t become a Force ghost if you aren’t one with the Force.