The Sith are very good at turning Jedi against everything they once believed. Going the other way is much messier. What happens when someone trained to hate, control, and kill decides they want a different life? Across the movies, shows, books, and games, that question has produced some of Star Wars’ most uncomfortable redemption stories.
1. Darth Vader Becomes Anakin Again By Saving Luke
Canon – Redeemed Sith And A Return To His Jedi Identity.
Vader is the most famous example, although his return does not involve an academy or a Council hearing. On the second Death Star, Luke refuses to kill his father. When Palpatine begins torturing Luke, Vader finally chooses his son over his master.
He turns against the Emperor, saves Luke, and suffers fatal injuries in the process. The man beneath the armor spends his final moments speaking to his son as Anakin Skywalker rather than trying to rule through him.
The ending of Return of the Jedi makes that return visible: Anakin appears alongside Obi-Wan and Yoda as a Force spirit. Calling him a Jedi again in that spiritual sense fits the story. Calling him formally readmitted to a functioning Jedi Order would add an event the film never shows.
His redemption also does not make the people he killed any less dead. What changes is his final choice, not his entire record.
2. Quinlan Vos Returns To The Order After Serving Dooku
Canon – Formally Reinstated Jedi.
Quinlan Vos has one of the clearest answers to the actual membership question. In Dark Disciple, the Jedi Council sends him to assassinate Count Dooku, with Asajj Ventress helping him prepare. That mission exposes Vos to the dark side before Dooku captures and manipulates him into becoming his apprentice.
His fall is not just an undercover act. Vos serves Dooku, deceives the Jedi, and kills fellow Jedi during his escape from Republic custody. His attempt to reach the Sith through their own methods becomes a real betrayal.
Ventress shields Vos from Dooku’s lightning, apparently sacrificing her life. Instead of answering that loss with another killing, Vos spares Dooku and later surrenders. Obi-Wan argues that the Council’s assassination order helped create this disaster, and Vos receives reinstatement under surveillance.
He returns to Jedi service, but trust has to be rebuilt. Vos qualifies as a restored Jedi and a former dark-side apprentice, not as a confirmed holder of the title Dark Lord of the Sith.
3. Ben Solo Leaves Kylo Ren Behind On Exegol
Canon – Redeemed Dark-Sider Who Dies As A Jedi.
Kylo Ren spends years trying to become worthy of Darth Vader’s legacy. He kills Han Solo, leads the First Order, and serves Snoke, but he is neither a Jedi nor a Sith during that dark-side career.
His return begins before his final sacrifice. Leia reaches out to him, Rey heals the wound she has inflicted, and his memory of Han gives him the conversation he could not accept before. Ben throws away Kylo Ren’s lightsaber and goes to help Rey confront Palpatine.
When Rey dies after defeating the Emperor, Ben uses his own life energy to bring her back. The effort kills him. His final identity is that of a redeemed Jedi, not the warlord who wanted Rey to join him in ruling the galaxy.
There is no later knighting ceremony or return to Luke’s destroyed school. Ben’s place on this list is about reclaiming the Jedi path through action, rather than receiving a new institutional rank.
4. Barriss Offee Rejects The Inquisitors And Becomes A Healer
Canon – Reclaims Her Jedi Identity Outside The Old Order.
Barriss first turns against the Jedi by arranging the Temple bombing and framing Ahsoka Tano. Her anger at the Order’s role in the war becomes an excuse for harming the very people she claims to defend.
Tales of the Empire then places her inside the Inquisitorius. Working beside the Fourth Sister forces Barriss to confront what serving the Empire actually means. When her companion attacks a Jedi who might have surrendered, Barriss refuses to leave the victim to die. She identifies herself as a Jedi again and turns against her fellow Inquisitor.
Later, she lives as a wandering healer, helping ordinary people and protecting a Force-sensitive child from Imperial pursuit. Her new life is built around care rather than punishment.
Barriss does not receive formal readmission from the old Jedi Council, which no longer exists. But reducing her story to merely abandoning the Empire misses something important: she actively takes back the Jedi identity she had rejected.
5. Reva Sevander Stops Before Repeating Vader’s Crime
Canon – Rejects Darkness, With No Confirmed Jedi Restoration.
Reva survives the Jedi Temple massacre as a child and later becomes the Third Sister. Her service under Vader hides a plan to kill him, but revenge does not protect her from becoming cruel herself.
After Vader defeats her, she follows information about Luke to Tatooine. Her anger now threatens a child who has done nothing to her. That is where her revenge stops looking like justice, even to Reva.
When she catches Luke, she sees the parallel with her own childhood. She cannot repeat what Anakin did to her friends. Reva returns Luke alive to Owen and Beru, then breaks down in front of Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan tells her that showing mercy has honored the children she lost. She lays down her lightsaber and is free to choose another life. Unlike Barriss, however, Reva has no confirmed later career as a Jedi or healer. Her entry ends at the moment she stops the cycle, not at an invented next chapter.
6. Revan Is Retrained As A Jedi After Being A Sith Lord
Legends – Sith Lord To Jedi, With A Serious Complication.
Revan provides the famous Sith-to-Jedi story in Knights of the Old Republic. Once a Jedi, he becomes Darth Revan and wages war against the Republic. When Malak turns on him during a Jedi boarding operation, Bastila Shan keeps him alive.
The Jedi Council then rewrites his memories and gives him a new identity. Revan does not initially approach the Jedi knowing exactly who he was and asking for forgiveness. He is being guided through a second life without the information needed to understand it.
On Dantooine, the Council accepts him for training. He studies the Jedi Code, builds a lightsaber, and works through the trials. The redemption becomes a conscious choice after he discovers the truth and still opposes Malak.
The game offers a dark-side ending too, but the light-side outcome is the one followed by the wider Legends story. Revan genuinely becomes a Jedi again; the Council’s manipulation makes the route there much less clean than a voluntary conversion.
7. Praven Actually Asks To Join The Jedi
Legends – Becomes A Jedi Padawan In A Light-Side Game Route.
Praven is especially useful because he is not simply a former Jedi returning to familiar teachings. He is a Sith Pureblood and a Sith Lord raised within Sith society, serving Darth Angral in The Old Republic.
On Tatooine, he faces the Jedi Knight protagonist in a duel. Even as an enemy, he values honor and refuses to treat every civilian death as necessary. Being shown compassion gives him reason to question what he has been taught about the Jedi.
In the conversion route, Praven surrenders to Republic authorities and asks to speak with the Jedi. They accept him as a Padawan. Later, he can be encountered on Corellia defending people against Imperial war droids, having abandoned his Sith title.
This is a branching game outcome, not something that occurs in every playthrough. With that condition stated, Praven is one of the strongest examples of a Sith voluntarily entering the Jedi Order. His species does not change; his beliefs and allegiance do.
8. Kam Solusar Goes From Imperial Dark Jedi To Jedi Master
Legends – Joins Luke’s Order And Becomes A Teacher.
Kam’s dark-side service begins with coercion rather than a simple hunger for power. The son of Jedi Ranik Solusar, he spends years hiding from the Empire before being captured. Torture breaks his resistance, and he becomes one of Palpatine’s dark-side warriors.
Luke eventually helps him recover his memories and reject the dark side. Kam then joins the first generation of students at Luke’s Jedi Praxeum on Yavin 4.
His story continues well beyond that rescue. Kam becomes a Jedi Master, helps run the academy, and works with his wife, Tionne, to teach and protect its students. During the Yuuzhan Vong War, safeguarding young Jedi becomes a major part of their work.
Kam is a former Dark Jedi, not automatically a Sith Lord because he served Palpatine. His long career inside the New Jedi Order nevertheless makes him a clear case of a dark-side user becoming a fully recognized Jedi, with responsibilities that last for years.
9. Ulic Qel-Droma Becomes A Jedi Teacher Without His Powers
Legends – Redeemed Former Sith, Without A Formal Return To The Order.
Ulic begins as a Jedi and tries to fight the dark side from within. Instead, he falls into it and becomes a Sith Lord alongside Exar Kun during the Great Sith War.
His breaking point is brutally personal: he kills his brother Cay. Nomi Sunrider then cuts him off from the Force, and Ulic has to live with both his crimes and the loss of the power that once defined him.
Years later, Nomi’s daughter Vima seeks him out. In Tales of the Jedi: Redemption, Ulic teaches Vima the Jedi way despite no longer being able to use the Force himself. The lessons draw on knowledge and experience, not impressive demonstrations of power.
When he dies, his body disappears into the Force, marking his redemption. There is no straightforward readmission ceremony to point to. Ulic’s return is instead expressed through the person he helps Vima become, after his own status and abilities have been taken away.
10. Kyp Durron Returns To Luke After Destroying Carida
Legends – Returns To Jedi Training And Eventually Becomes A Master.
Kyp’s case is harder to feel comfortable with. A young student at Luke’s academy, he falls under the influence of Exar Kun’s spirit and turns his anger at the Empire into a destructive crusade.
Using the Sun Crusher, Kyp causes Carida’s star to explode, destroying the world and killing vast numbers of people. His own brother is among the victims. Exar Kun’s influence matters, but it does not turn the devastation into a harmless mistake.
After Luke’s students defeat Kun’s spirit, Kyp surrenders to Han Solo. Luke allows him to resume training, challenging him to commit himself to becoming a Jedi rather than remain trapped in fear and anger. Kyp eventually becomes a Jedi Master and a member of the New Jedi Order’s leadership.
Unlike the cases that end with a sacrifice or an uncertain future, Kyp has an unmistakable institutional return. The difficult part is not whether he became a Jedi. It is the scale of the second chance he received after everything he had done.
