Kylo Ren, the new Supreme Leader of the First Order, stands quiet and still on the bridge of the Finalizer drifting in the Force. He's searching for answers. And fearing what he might find.

"Supreme Leader."

It's Hux addressing him with that nasal Coruscant accent that half the First Order officer corps has and the other half carefully imitates. However gratifying it is to hear General Hux speak his new title, it still sounds annoying to Kylo's ears.

"Supreme Leader." Armitage Hux is nothing if not persistent.

"What is it?" Kylo doesn't bother to turn around.

He listens as Hux dutifully provides an assessment of the damage to the Supremacy. Repair estimates range from three to six months, an unacceptable delay at a time when the First Order has finally won the war and must move quickly to seize control of the Core. Kylo promptly orders all the weaponry and men evacuated from the Supremacy onto other vessels. Snoke's scuttled ship will not be allowed to slow things down. The First Order needs a show of force on Coruscant, Chandrila, and all the major Core systems. They must move swiftly after the decisive defeat of the Resistance at Crait. His mother might be alive along with twenty or so members of her ragtag terrorist group, but they have no fleet, no manpower, and no weaponry with which to oppose him now. At long last, all systems will bow down to the First Order. And now, when they swear allegiance to the Supreme Leader, it will be to Kylo Ren.

This victory is historic and deeply personal. It ought to feel more satisfying, he thinks. But Kylo can't shake the feeling that the war is not yet done.

He dismisses Hux and goes back to the Force. He blocks out the sights and sounds of the busy bridge of his new flagship. With long practice, Kylo drops quickly into deep meditation in the Force. He's trying hard to make sense of all that has happened in the last two weeks. Snoke dead on his throne, Han Solo dead on the Starkiller Base, the girl Rey awakened to an astonishing raw talent, Luke Skywalker dead after a last stand projection in the Force, both Hosnia and the Starkiller Base obliterated, the New Republic and the Resistance forces reduced to nothing. After years of plotting and dreaming, vindication has finally come for the erstwhile runaway Jedi Padawan Ben Solo. And it had come swiftly and decisively, in ways he did and did not expect.

What does it all mean? That's the question Kylo Ren puzzles over now. He is the child of idealistic Rebellion heroes raised in the promise of the New Republic. And so, cynically he knows that victory does not always connote success. Those same rebels who partied on Endor and danced in the streets after the Battle of Jakku were the ones to flounder when it came to governing. Time and again, they made a mess of things. And that's why the First Order arose. At least, that's the simplistic causation the history books will explain. But they will be only half right. For politics and economics can explain many things, but they do not explain the Force.

The Force does not unfold like a narrative with a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's far more mysterious in its ways. More intuitive. More capricious too. It is the work of a lifetime, old Luke Skywalker used to teach. Snoke would probably have agreed. But Kylo Ren doesn't have a lifetime to gain wisdom. He needs answers now.

What does it mean for Snoke and Skywalker to die? If Darkness and Light are eternal, then what does it mean to lose the last vestiges of the Jedi and the Sith?

And what is the point of the girl Rey? How important is she to him?

Kylo feels like he should know these answers because the Force is repeating itself yet again. It's a like a hall of mirrors that reflects the same image distorted a bit each time. It's the same thing, over and over again, only different in ways that leap out at you.

An unsuspecting youth finds a droid on the run in the desert with a deadly secret. That's how it begins on Tatooine and then again on Jakku. A different droid, a different youth, a different secret. But the conflict that gives rise to the situation is fundamentally the same. And the aimless, bored youth that is radicalized in the process is much the same too. Each time, an angry orphan looking for a cause and a replacement family signs up for war without any inkling of what destiny has in store. Darkness rises and Light to meet it. It's an age-old battle that has been fought many times before.

Leading Kylo to wonder: can it ever end?

The youth needs a teacher, and each time two options arise. I can teach you the ways of the Force. The boy from Tatooine finds an exiled master and then, to his horror, he is courted by a masked Dark lord. He answers with a righteous denial and ignites his sword. The girl from Jakku also finds an exiled master. But first, she finds a creature in a mask who calls her his guest and offers to help. She names him a monster and also answers with a swing of her sword. What the girl misses is what the boy before her had missed too—that this was more than just an overture from Darkness. That this was a path forward to the balance of the Force. Both times it is offered by a Skywalker Chosen One himself. Each time, the emphatic rejection that follows is the ultimate in ignorant hubris. For so certain is the girl from Jakku, like the boy from Tatooine before her, that all the answers that matter come from the Light Side of the Force.

Leading Kylo to wonder: can there ever be balance if Force users keep reverting to extremes?

Then later, that youth full of hope and Light surrenders for a confrontation. There they stand brave and stalwart before the Dark Side of the Force. They have come to redeem the conflicted apprentice and both times that's how it works out. The apprentice kills the master and victory is achieved? Well, once. But it was fleeting. And this time around, it is the youth who cannot follow through. For given the opportunity to reconcile the two warring factions of the universe, she loses her nerve. Join me and we can rule the galaxy. Suddenly horrified by what her actions have wrought, the youth turns and runs. And so the war in the Force and in the galaxy churns on . . .

Leading Kylo to wonder: what does it mean for Darkness to offer peace and for the Light to turn it down?

"Supreme Leader."

It's Hux again, interrupting his reverie and jerking Kylo back to more immediate questions. For there is a great deal to be done. The galaxy is reeling from a bloody civil war. The Force is jettisoned from its longtime opposing ideologies. The resulting power vacuum and lack of organization mean everything is up for grabs. Thirty years after the Old Empire fell, it's all a mess again. And as the Supreme Leader and the only trained Force user left alive, it's Kylo Ren's mess now.

This is his lot in life, Kylo knows. To pick up the pieces of other people's failings and make sense of it all. For Light Side or Dark Side, the legacy of the Skywalkers is suffering, death and destruction writ large across billions of lives. It falls to him, the very last of their line, to bring an end to it all. He, Kylo Ren, will finish what his grandfather started all those years ago. He will bring peace, freedom, justice and security to his new empire. He will bring balance to the Force.

"Supreme Leader."

"Yes," comes his testy reply. Kylo whirls to face his lead general and extracts his mind from the Force. But not before he catches the faintest echo of his dead master's mocking laughter deep in the recesses of his mind. It puts a sneer on Kylo's face behind the mask. Good riddance and fuck you, Supreme Leader Snoke. A Sith is supposed to be hard to kill, Kylo thinks, but in his old master's case apparently not.