Revan is the masked Jedi who went to war against the Mandalorians, came home a Sith Lord, and very nearly conquered the Republic, roughly four thousand years before the films. He was created by BioWare for Knights of the Old Republic in 2003, and no character born in a Star Wars game has gone further: the face of a game, an MMO expansion, a novel, two Galaxy of Heroes units, a Black Series figure chosen by fan vote, and the name on a Sith trooper legion in canon. If you have seen a black-and-red mask with a hood on a T-shirt, that was Revan.

People care for one reason before all the others: KOTOR built its whole story around him, and the way it does that is still the best surprise in Star Wars games. If you have not played it, stop after the next section, buy it for ten dollars, and come back. Our is KOTOR worth playing in 2026 guide covers the version and the two mods to install first.

The short version, no spoilers

  • Who: a Jedi Knight who led the Republic to victory in the Mandalorian Wars against the Jedi Council's wishes, then fell to the dark side with his friend Malak and turned the Republic's own fleet against it. In the game's opening, Revan is already gone and Darth Malak is running the war.
  • Era: the Old Republic. KOTOR is set in 3956 BBY, which is why it opens our Star Wars games in order timeline.
  • Status: Legends. Everything below happened in the pre-2014 Expanded Universe, with a few canon nods we list near the end.
  • Where to meet him: KOTOR, KOTOR II (by reputation only), The Old Republic, and Galaxy of Heroes.
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Spoilers for KOTOR, KOTOR II and The Old Republic from here

Everything past this box gives away the central twist of Knights of the Old Republic, the ending of the novel Revan, and the end of Revan's story in The Old Republic. If you plan to play KOTOR, this is the place to stop.

The twist in KOTOR (2003)

You are Revan. KOTOR has you make a character, name them, and wake up as a Republic soldier on a ship under attack above Taris. For the first half of the game, Revan is a dead legend that everyone talks about. Then, aboard Malak's flagship, the Leviathan, Malak tells you who you are: the Jedi Council captured Revan after Malak's betrayal, Bastila Shan saved Revan's life, and the Council wiped Revan's mind and built a new identity on top of it. Bastila is captured in the same scene, and you finish the hunt for the Star Forge without her.

The reveal works because the game has been planting it for twenty hours, and because it lands on the player's choices rather than a character's. Everything you did as a "new" Jedi was done by the person who started the war. The final act lets you take the title back, as Darth Revan with Bastila at your side, or finish the redemption and destroy the Star Forge. Game Informer ranked it among the great video game plot twists, and Bastila's voice actor, Jennifer Hale, has said the reveal surprised her while recording (both cited on Wikipedia).

Because the player designed Revan, the character had no fixed face or gender in the game. Lucasfilm's reference book The New Essential Chronology (2005) later settled it: Revan was a man, and the light side ending is what happened.

KOTOR II: Revan offstage

Obsidian's sequel, The Sith Lords (2004), is set five years later and keeps Revan out of frame on purpose. Revan has left known space to chase a threat he remembered, and the story belongs to a new player character, the Jedi Exile, who served under Revan in the Mandalorian Wars. Everyone the Exile meets has an opinion about Revan, Kreia claims to have been Revan's first teacher, and the game asks you which version of Revan you played. The only time he appears is a silent vision in a tomb on Korriban.

Lead designer Chris Avellone later questioned how far Obsidian pushed Revan aside, and said the plan for a third game was for the Exile to follow Revan into the Unknown Regions to the old Sith threat (Wikipedia). That game was never made. If you play II, play it with the restored content mod.

The novel Revan (2011), and why it split people

What happened next arrived as a book instead. Drew Karpyshyn, KOTOR's lead writer, wrote The Old Republic: Revan, published by Del Rey on November 15, 2011, five weeks before the MMO launched (Wookieepedia). It wrote out in full what the games had left to the player and reference books had settled in a line or two: Revan is a man married to Bastila, the Exile is a woman, now named Meetra Surik, and both games ended on the light side. Then it explained the fall: Revan and Malak had gone into the Unknown Regions, found a hidden Sith Empire, and been turned by its Emperor and sent back as his agents.

The ending is what people still argue about. Meetra Surik finds Revan, who is imprisoned on Dromund Kaas, and they make an attempt on the Emperor with a Sith Lord named Scourge. It fails, and Scourge kills the Exile with a lightsaber in the back (Wookieepedia). The player character of KOTOR II dies in a supporting role in someone else's book, and Revan spends the next three centuries as the Emperor's prisoner. Reviews at the time were mixed: Fantasy Book Review gave it 7 out of 10 and found Meetra the thinnest character in it (review), and a 2025 retrospective at ComicBookMovie (read it) called the Emperor's mind control the second time the same trick was played on the same character.

The Old Republic: Foundry, Shadow of Revan, and the end

BioWare's MMO, set about three hundred years after the books, finishes the job. In the base game, the Republic frees Revan from the Emperor's Maelstrom Prison, and in the Foundry flashpoint he builds a droid army, with HK-47 at its head, to wipe out anyone with Sith blood. The Imperial players stop him, and he vanishes in a flash of light.

He came back as the villain of Shadow of Revan, the fourth digital expansion, released December 9, 2014 after a week of early access (Wookieepedia). The light half of Revan had died at the Foundry; the dark half, which hated the Emperor more than it cared about anyone else, had survived. He built a cult called the Revanites inside both the Republic and the Empire, tried to draw both sides into a battle over Rishi, and on Yavin 4 tried to bring the Emperor back to a body so he could kill him for good. Players fight him as the final boss of the Temple of Sacrifice operation, the expansion's raid.

That is Revan's last death in Legends. After the fight, his two halves reunite and he passes into the Force, dated to 3637 BBY. His spirit appears once more in the Onslaught expansion's Echoes of Oblivion story, helping players finish off the Emperor's spirit before it can possess Satele Shan (Revan on Wookieepedia, Legends). In the same continuity, Darth Bane later finds Revan's holocron on Lehon and builds the Rule of Two from it.

Is Revan canon?

No. When Lucasfilm reset continuity on April 25, 2014, every game before it became Legends, KOTOR, KOTOR II, The Old Republic and the novel included. What canon has done since is say his name:

  • The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary (2019), by Lucasfilm Story Group's Pablo Hidalgo, names one of the Sith Eternal's trooper legions on Exegol the Revan Legion, and calls Revan an ancient Sith Lord whose meaning only the cultists understood.
  • Shadow of the Sith (Adam Christopher, 2022) has Sith cultists on Exegol chanting his name.

That is the whole canon record, per Wookieepedia's canon Revan page: a Sith Lord with no face, no story and no confirmed gender. He came close to more: Revan and Darth Bane were cut from The Clone Wars episode "Ghosts of Mortis" in 2011 at George Lucas's request, and the animatic survives on the Season Three Blu-ray. The LEGO special Rebuild the Galaxy: Pieces of the Past (Disney+, September 2025) brought Darth Revan back, but it is non-canon. Wookieepedia also notes that the KOTOR remake has not been canonized.

Where to meet Revan today

KOTOR is the only place to play as him, and the twist above is the reason to. It is $9.99 on Steam and GOG, and also on Switch, iOS and Android. PC is the version to buy, because the mods only work there. Our planet order walkthrough and best build guides take you through the run.

KOTOR II is the best story ever written about Revan's absence. Play it second.

The Old Republic is free to start on Steam, and Revan runs through the Foundry, the Forged Alliances arc and Shadow of Revan. The story sits about three hundred years after KOTOR and assumes you know who he is.

Galaxy of Heroes has both halves. Jedi Knight Revan arrived on October 18, 2018 in the Legend of the Old Republic event, for KOTOR's fifteenth anniversary (StarWars.com), and Darth Revan followed in March 2019 in Scourge of the Old Republic, which asked for five KOTOR characters at seven stars (Dork Side of the Force).

The KOTOR remake is still coming, officially and slowly. It was revealed on September 9, 2021 for PS5 and PC, moved from Aspyr to Saber Interactive, and has shown nothing new since. Saber's Tim Willits said in March 2026 it is still in development, and in July Saber's business chief Steve Allison listed it among the company's 2028 plans with a "hopefully" attached, which Saber told PC Gamer was not an official date. When Lucasfilm Games put it in its 2026 sizzle reel on September 12, it used Revan's shot from the 2021 teaser. Our running remake status page has the rest. If you are waiting for the remake to meet Revan, play the original now: the remake is years away, and the twist is twenty-three years old and still the best one Star Wars games have.

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