Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

I definitely get Disk-One Final Boss vibes from Snoke. He feels too... obvious, you know? Like, he's literally just Palpatine 2.0, and now that we know that he's almost certainly going to be an OC of some kind it just begs the question why even bother trying to set him up as some sort of insane twist final boss when we already know how this story ends.

I'm scratching my head as to a change to his character that would make him a fresh, appealing Big Bad for the new trilogy.

(Darth Plagueis glares in the distance)

Also his name reminds me of a 1980s Super Sentai villain. Those guys had handles like "Generalissimo Taboo," "Great Professor Bias," "Star King Bazeu," and "Underground Emperor Zeba." "Supreme Leader Snoke" fits right in.

See, I was thinking about that, but I'm not even sure The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise could really make a Snoke final boss any less of a blatant rehash of Return of the Jedi. It's cool that Snoke would then tie into the history of the saga and become a meaningful character and not just a super spooky dark lord man who just kind of rolled up at the right time in the right place for everything right to happen, but the end result is still the same. Kylo Ren gets redeemed, and everyone teams up to kick Snoke's ass, and they save the galaxy until Bog Iger decides that his wallets have been feeling a little lighter than they should be as of late. It's painfully safe.

I've said this before, but I'd like Snoke to be from a race that was a fallen power of the ancient galaxy. Maybe recanonize the Rakata and have Snoke's people be former clients or rivals of theirs.

Clearly Snoke should've just called himself Ugly Toxic Poison.

It's all up to execution. I think the Plagueis twist would help because it'd prop him up on the idea he's been running around behind the scenes of the franchise since (chronologically) its very beginning and it could provide him a lot more character nuances. For example, it could be revealed he's a walking ball of paranoia because Palpatine betrayed him (as ROTS strongly implies) so he's both Crazy-Prepared and since then he doesn't trust anyone so he keeps sabotaging even his own allies. Or even give him a bit of a tragic character like the semi-canonical Plagueis novel did (by implying he was trying to finally break the Sith cycle of betrayal and be immortal with his apprentice before his apprentice decided to betray him). There's also Plagueis's interest in creating life through the Midichlorians. Very interesting things could be done using Plagueis as a springboard.

I'm also pretty sure Kylo Ren is not getting redemption.

Other than the ol' Plagueis switcheroo which we're probably not getting, Snoke is quite hard to turn in anything really interesting.

If we gotta echo some movie, I'd say ehco ROTS and have Mentor vs Mentor (Luke vs Snoke) and apprentice vs apprentice (Rey vs Kylo).

The most interesting fan idea people had before TFA's release was that Snoke would be a Sith of Yoda's species.

edited 7th May '17 7:38:08 PM by Gaon

That's kinda why I like the idea of Snoke unexpectedly folding like a wet paper bag next to Luke, while Kylo is the actual Final Boss, and a lot harder to bring down due to being his opponent's equal in strength. Would be a fun Meta Twist.

I don't like that idea as much because I don't feel Kylo can carry the menace factor on his own. I want someone who understands jack shit of the Dark Side to remain around to talk about it. Like I want Luke so we have someone who has some understanding of the Light Side to remain around to talk about it.

I could definately seeing Kylo pulling a Took a Level in Jerkass and becoming a far more knowledgeable and dangerous antagonist.

Well he won't become an expert on the nuances of the dark side in the span of one movie, i think. He's way too much of a novice (like Rey) to really philosophize about the secrets and nuances of darkness.

edited 7th May '17 7:55:47 PM by Gaon

As to Kylo's fate, Zephyr offered my favorite suggestion thus far: he lives and has a Heel Realization if not a redemption... but Reality Ensues and the New Republic still carts him off to a maximum-security prison.

A lot of speculation is about an extra-galactic threat, which maybe either the origin of Snoke, Ren (as in the one the Knights are named after) who is still hanging around or something else entirely.

edited 7th May '17 9:07:13 PM by TerminusEst

I think that's from the new Thrawn novel, which recanonizes Thrawn's motives for joining the Empire as his being aware of a threat in the Unknown Regions he wanted Palpatine's assistance in stopping. No telling if the threat's identity will remain the same, though; in Legends it was the Yuuzhan Vong.

The only difference being that Palpatine knows there is something calling to him from the Unknown Regions, but isn't entirely sure what it is, maybe the source of his power, maybe something else. So I doubt it's the Yuuzhan Vong.

edited 7th May '17 9:10:36 PM by TerminusEst

Mind you, the YV may not be completely gone. Filoni revealed at Celebration 2015 that had TCW not been canceled, a future episode would've featured this guy right here.

Huh, interesting.

Whether Snoke will be the ultimate final boss of the trilogy is a mystery but it would stand to reason he has his own "master". So first we get the enforcer (Kylo Ren), then we get the boss (Snoke) and finally some abominable evil (Ren/Star Vampires/Celery).

x2 Aren't the unaired Clone Wars episodes also still considered canon? Or is that hearsay?

This one apparently wasn't even storyboarded, so probably not.

I've generally assumed that we won't be seeing the Vong themselves in the new canon, but that an extragalactic threat is something that is a fairly logical place to get to and elements of the Vong might be incorporated. My pet theory is that Snoke will turn out to be an expy of Nom Anor; essentially, that he's an agent sent ahead of an invasion to stir up chaos in the galaxy, and his entire Palpatine 2.0 act is just that. Posing as a creepy cult leader was one of Anor's favorite tricks, after all. And Snoke really seemed unconcerned that Starkiller Base, which the First Order had presumably poured massive amounts of credits and decades of work into, got destroyed after one successful use. Almost like he doesn't care about the First Order at all, except as a means to an end...

Of course, Snoke either has the Force or is at least knowledgeable enough about it to teach Kylo, so that's at least one significant difference from Anor. But it still makes sense to me.

EDIT: Speaking of the Vong, am I the only one who thinks Snoke looks a bit like one? Not one of the burly warriors who are generally The Face of the Vong as a faction, but still - he's a tall, gaunt grey-skinned humanoid who's Covered in Scars and is potentially of extragalactic origin... makes you wonder...

edited 7th May '17 9:44:04 PM by MasterGhandalf

He's too "clean" even with the scars, plus weren't Vong pinkish-purple?

edited 7th May '17 10:21:19 PM by Karxrida

I kinda like Kylo Ren becoming a Dragon-Ascendant/The Starcream and achieving what Anakin/Darth Vader keopt shooting for. That is the Empire under their control.

You don't really need Snoke for that. Kylo Ren could go through some intense training by the third episode. And I don't think we're going to get a lot of Snoke anyway.

edited 8th May '17 12:21:06 AM by MadSkillz

Their skin tones vary a bit Depending on the Artist, but in my experience they're most commonly described/depicted as varying shades of grey, with black hair (when they're not bald, which is explicitly noted to be more common for them than humans). And again, I'm not saying Snoke is a Vong (he doesn't have pointed ears, either, which artists usually gave them) but that his appearance is something reasonably close.

@Is the unaired Vong episode canon: Do we know how far along the episode was? I'm pretty sure the Siege of Mandalore was never animated or anything but it's still canon for Ahsoka and Maul's characterizations in Rebels. I think Filoni said it would have been the season 8 finale so unless the Vong weren't going to show up until 9 I'd assume their story is canon too.

I don't think everything they ever imagined/began writing for the later seasons is canon, just whatever certain things they fit into The 'Verse - even without the episode itself, for example, iirc the Siege of Mandalore despite not appearing was integrated as essential to the conclusion of the Clone Wars.

If the Vong stuff was canon, we would certainly know for sure by now, in the same way we've been told for sure the Siege or Bad Batch stuff is.

edited 8th May '17 10:30:45 AM by KnownUnknown