Ben Solo Challenge

About

Ben Solo Challenge refers to a series of parody videos in which people mimic Ben Solo's shrug before fighting the Knights of Ren with Luke Skywalker's lightsaber in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The social media challenge went viral soon after it was introduced to TikTok and Twitter in January 2020.

Origin

On December 20th, 2019, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was released. In the film, before Ben Solo faces the Knights of Ren, he reveals Luke Skywalker's lightsaber from behind his back and shrugs (shown below).^[2]

On January 6th, 2020, TikToker @mikelovestheshrug uploaded the first video mimicking the Ben Solo scene but only received about 30 likes in a day (shown below). That same day, he shared his own video to Twitter using the account @testtube27^[1] and received over 11,400 likes and 1,600 retweets in a day.

Spread

On January 6th, 2020, Twitter user @JakeFromYavin posted his version of of the challenge and attached the hashtag #BenSoloChallenge (shown below). The video gained over 15,700 likes and 2,300 retweets in a day.

That same day, Twitter user @ObiwanxKannoli uploaded a video with the caption, "The #BenSoloChallenge from a tiny sick Ben Solo who wanted to join in" (shown below) which accumulated over 11,000 likes and 1,500 retweets in a day.

That day, Twitter user @KyloIsSad compared the scene to Han Solo performing the same shrug using a GIF and the caption "Wow this guy does a pretty good #BenSoloChallenge. Wrong weapon but great shrug!" (shown below). The tweet garnered over 1,500 likes and 200 retweets in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References