Headscratchers / The Last Jedi Canon Consistency

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Star Wars Universe / Canon Consistency

Was I supposed to know who Vice Admiral Holdo is?

• The way characters react to her when she's first introduced implies that she has quite a history and an impressive one at that (i.e. someone says something alone the lines of "You're the Vice Admiral Holdo?" and mentions a battle that I forgot that name of), yet as far as I can tell she's a new character. I can perhaps understand this as a case of Remember the New Guy?; the idea of a new character being portrayed as someone who was really always there is not alien to me, but it seems weird to introduce a new character and then kill her off in a story that's primarily about the last hurrahs of the original trio and the continuing adventures of the characters introduced in The Force Awakens. Maybe she is a new character, but Star Wars Legends is so vast it's entirely possible she's this huge figure in this or that novel series that's just flown over my head; I've been a Star Wars fan since I was a kid and I didn't know who Thrawn was until a year ago. The idea that she's a Legends character getting her canon debut also made me remind her of Thrawn; a famous and skilled tactician who's pragmatic who uses unorthodox (but ultimately amazingly successful) tactics.
  • I do not think you're supposed to know her. In fact, when they're announcing who is now in command there is a small pause, and the camera lingers briefly on Poe. The implication, I felt, was that he would be in command. The way the character is set up and how she is portrayed, shows that she is meant to be disliked. She brushes off Poe, comes across as cold, and refuses to share her plan with him. This is all done to make sure the audience sides with Poe against her. It's even somewhat hinted at that she may actually be actively betraying the rebellion.
  • Speaking of how the audience is meant to distrust her, this also led to my confusion over who she was meant to be. The way she's introduced makes it clear she's well known in the Resistance but frustratingly we're not given much about her. If their intent was to make us be surprised at what she eventually does, they certainly worked. The way's she's portrayed definitely gives off a President Alma Coin vibe to me i.e. a female leader whose competence is marred by the nagging obviousness that she knows more than she's letting on combined with the very real possibility of turning out to be another bad guy.
  • She is a character from the new Expanded Universe, being introduced in Leia, Princess of Alderaan. Disney is taking a very multimedia-centric approach to the franchise, with tie-in books, comics, and an animated series all playing into the new canon. Which, to be honest, isn't too different from what being a Star Wars fan was like over the last 20 years or so with the large library of books and other media in the Legends continuity. Could you explain why so many fans love Wedge so much given that the character had probably fifteen lines and five scenes in the entire film franchise not counting the books?
  • Wedge was kind of the opposite of Holdo in my opinion. He was there from the beginning, in A New Hope, as a bit character. He slowly got more and more prominence as the story progressed, and the EU was probably a big part of that, but even in the films his progression is fairly logical -going from a random pilot who happened to survive an important battle, to Luke's second-in-command on Hoth, to one of the squad leaders during the Battle of Endor. By contrast, Holdo comes out of nowhere. She's introduced as being a major figure in the Resistance as well as Leia's closest friend for decades despite the audience never having heard of her before. The fact that she had an appearance in the new EU prior to this film doesn't really change that, as she's still being retconned into the story. It just means that TLJ wasn't her first appearance.
  • An important note on the EU: the majority of fans, particularity the older fans, are only interested in the films not the books, comics, magazines etc. and Disney knows this, but are trying to push other sources as a way of making money. I am not condemning nor condoning the practice, and George Lucas was hardly innocent either, but any hand wave that starts with she was in X book is meaningless to millions of people. There is also the widespread belief - most noticeable if you ever go to a Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter forum talking about film plot holes that are explained in the book - that films should stand on their own without supplemental material particularly in an age where the cinema is becoming grossly expensive for what it is. So again, the excuse she was in X book or this was explained in X book just ends up starting a flame war.
  • In fairness, it's been thirty-odd years in-story since the end of the original trilogy and this one. That's plenty of time for our main characters to meet some new people, and for others to rise to prominence whom we might not be familiar with. In a meta-sense, the reason she's a new character instead of someone we're familiar with is precisely because we're unfamiliar with her, and so will not be able to fully ascertain her motives. If, say, Admiral Ackbar was the person in charge throughout, the conflict with Poe would be different because the audience already has some familiarity with Ackbar and, knowing that he's unlikely to be a coward or traitor, will assume from the start that he probably has some secret plan that we're not privy to. With Holdo, because we don't know as much about her we don't know whether she's got a secret plan, or is a Dirty Coward who's freezing up or panicking, or is a traitor who's selling out the Resistance, or so on.
• Essentially no, unless your read the Leia book you would not know who Holdo is, and that is ok. In the previous movies they always introduce characters some are familiar with but others are not. Like Qui-Gon, who Yoda and obviously Obi-Wan knew but we had no idea who he was, and like Holdo is dead by the end of the movie. Or Admiral Raddus or Admiral Ackbar. Introduced in their respective movies as well known characters but are new for the audience. Maz Kanata is no different from Holdo either. Note this would be different for someone such as Jabba, who got a passing mention in A New Hope and was finally seen (originally) for the first time in Return of the Jedi.

Okay... so, who is Snoke?

• It was a pretty ballsy move to kill him off, and to elevate Kylo to the Big Bad role, in true Sith way, but seriously, who was that guy? Why did he looked like he looked? Where did he got his powers? Where did he get the loyalty of Imperial remnant and authority over it? I think we actually deserve answers on this one.
  • We'll find out more about him later, either in Rebels, a book, or some other source. Ultimately the decision was framed as 'this is Kylo Ren's story, and who Snoke was isn't really important to that', which I kinda agree with.
  • The fact that it's common knowledge in-universe just makes it maddening. We haven't even gotten solid word on whether he's a Sith or something new (what little we hear of his philosophy suggests he's not), but the characters have known about him for decades.
  • One could argue that Snoke having no defined backstory is another expression of this film's running "don't get bogged down in the past" theme. If it truly doesn't matter whether Rey's parents were junk-scavenging nobodies, or whether Finn used to be a Storm Trooper who'd only worked sanitation, then it doesn't really matter who Snoke was before he became Supreme Leader, either. Indeed, his tacky golden bathrobe may be subtly symbolic of him being a jumped-up nobody also, with an ex-nobody's kitschy notion of what looks "regal".
  • Did anyone notice that Snoke was channeling a lot of Emperor Palpatine in this movie? The guy practically quote-mined half of his lines from Return of the Jedi.
  • Some people have speculated that he's a clone of Palpatine. (And maybe something went wrong with the cloning process, which would explain why he looks all weird.) But the Doylist answer is that nearly everything in the sequel trilogy is a rehash of the original trilogy.
  • We did not know who the emperor was in the OT either. We did not even know his name. Ultimately Snoke only matters to this story as the one who corrupted Ben same as Sidious with Vader. We will probably have a book about him in a year or three.
  • The notion of being forced to buy a book to make this character make sense is just terrible writing. A film should always stand on its own merits. I'm reminded of Revenge of the Sith where we weren't actually told on screen what they wanted revenge for.
  • Actually, it's easy to figure out what Revenge in the title means. Sith and Jedi don't like each other. Sith have been considered extinct for a thousand years by the Jedi. And it doesn't take much to put the two to two together. However, Snoke is a really bad case of doing All There in the Manual.
  • The character makes plenty of sense on his own, just like the Emperor described above. This simply is not Snoke's story it is Rey and Kylo's. We will learn more about Snoke in episode IX, if and only if, those revelations have a bearing on the story. Star Wars is a "galactic fairy tale" and fairy tale villains seldom have a backstory.
  • That relies on the claim that Snoke doesn't make sense without knowing his backstory, but he makes plenty of sense without his backstory. Ultimately what the movie is saying is that this isn't Snoke's story and he isn’t the most important thing here.
  • There are several WMGs about Snoke. That he's a clone of Palpatine, that he's Moff Tarkin, that he's the first Jedi, that he's Jar Jar Binks... with the lack of information, any of them can be true. And, ultimately, it does not matter.
  • The idea that "it doesn't matter who Snoke is" is rather annoying, and the comparisons of him to Palpatine miss the point. The OT was made back in the 70s and 80s, on a much lower budget, and each movie was shorter; Lucas also had at least written a backstory for Palpatine out and had some idea of who he was. As it happens, even the very first movie A New Hope gave us more information about Palpatine than either TFA or TLJ gave us about Snoke, establishing that there was an intergalactic Republic that he took over relatively recently and turned into an Empire, turning on the Jedi in the process and converting one of their best to his side. That works for the first three movies of a fresh-out-of-the-over trilogy; it works far less well for the 7th and 8th movies in a 40 year old franchise, even disregarding the mountain of backstory that non-movie sources had filled in over time.
  • What do you mean, "Who is Snoke?" He's the Supreme Leader. Just as the Emperor was The Emperor. We didn't need a prequel trilogy to figure out who the Emperor was, he was Vader's master. Snoke is (was) Ren's master, and the one who corrupted him to the Dark Side. It's all in the first film. Don't look too deep into this stuff, it's not that complicated.
  • He's clearly another Skywalker, given that he gets his hand cut off.^{From A Certain Point Of View} I mean, he got his whole upper torso cut off, but the hand got cut off of that too.
  • To me, the difference between Sidious and Snoke is the former was part of the overall picture when we entered this universe In Medias Res while the latter is a significant contributor to the Sequel Reset of TFA, if not its mastermind. Ben's parents basically blame Snoke for their son's Face–Heel Turn and even Luke (who considers himself to be the catalyst of said FHT) cites Snoke's influence on Ben as the justification for his own Moment of Weakness.
    
    There's also the fact that, in the prequels, when Darth Maul is on a rampage, the Council immediately (and rightly) center on The Sith, and don't consider any other dark side factions, effectively believing that the Sith are the only one. While I would be with Luke on calling that out as Hubris, one would think that we'd get some information about this "new" Dark-Side faction. The only thing that we can be sure of is that Snoke is not a Sith; or a Light-Sider of any stripe.
    
    The key question here is "What went so wrong in the Galaxy Far Far Away after Sidious was slain?" "Who is Snoke?" is just a piece of that, albeit a Supremacy-sized one.
  • The thing with Snoke is that he is apparently responsible for the whole Happy Ending Override that happened between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens - at least a little exposition on how he did that would have been appreciated.
  • When you get down to it, Snoke is really just Palpatine Mark II. That's pretty much all we need to know about him. He's not — in this one person's humble opinion at least — hugely interesting in and of himself, he's just a fairly generic all-powerful Big Bad. Chances are, if we were to get his backstory, it wouldn't be incredibly different in substance to Palpatine's own rise to power. Where he came from, how he founded the First Order, how he insinuated himself with Kylo, etc. are just details more than anything else. The fact that he ends up being taken out fairly easily and replaced with a rather more complex, conflicted and inexperienced Big Bad relatively easily is probably the most interesting thing about him.
• What I keep thinking when hearing detractors and fans wrangle with each other over this question is "Does it occur to anybody that we've still got another whole movie to go in this trilogy, and that maybe we'll hear more about Snoke there?" I tend to think the same thing about those other Knights of Ren we didn't see in this movie; well, the writers have to leave some mysteries to be resolved in the sequel, don't they? A lot of people are talking about Snoke and the Knights of Ren as if not answering questions about them in this movie means those questions will never be answered ever!
  
  If anything, Return of the Jedi taught us that if there's something the fans are really dying to know, the writers will address it. After Vader's big shocking reveal to Luke, a fair number of fans even then were asking "Can we really be sure Vader isn't lying?" (Even James Earl Jones said in an interview that he thought Vader had to be lying when he first saw that line in his script.) There was also the question of how and why it had occurred to Luke to reach out to Leia with the Force when he needed to be rescued. Hence the scenes in Return of the Jedi in which Yoda and Obi-Wan confirm that yes, Vader was telling the truth about being Luke's father and yes, Luke instinctively sensed Leia was Force-sensitive and reached out to her because she's his twin sister.
  
  In short, if you really want to know who Snoke is, take a chill pill and go demand an answer from the writers. Especially considering they've probably got an eye on trying to Win Back the Crowd after so many fans got frustrated with questions like these being left unanswered in this movie, they'll surely work something into the next movie to address any reasonable request, such as "Tell us who Snoke is, already! Everyone's dying to know!"
  • The Rise of Skywalker has answered this question. Snoke is a clone created by Emperor Palpatine as a puppet leader of the First Order while Palpatine builds his secret army of Sith Troopers and Star Destroyers.

Where was R2-D2?

• I might be misremembering the film, but it looked like R2 showed up in that one scene with Luke on the Falcon and then...vanished. Did he show up again or did he do anything?
  • Pretty sure he was on the Falcon the whole time.
  • He probably just "lives" on the Falcon nowadays. He doesn't seem to be in very good repair and seems to spend most of his time shut down, anyway.
  • R2-D2, as heartbreaking as it may for us fans to say, is obsolete. The BB units are capable of doing essentially everything the R2 units can but better. He's in disrepair not just because he is old, but because next to no one makes spare parts for him anymore. He lives on the Falcon because the Falcon is just as old as he is and thus he is still able to make himself useful. Here is a short Youtube video explaining this in slightly further detail.
  • So R2 is out of date, but C-3PO, who was built from other scrapped protocol droids on Tatooine, meaning his design is probably older, is still up to date enough HE can get parts?
  • I'd imagine that protocol droids like C-3PO probably wouldn't change as much or as drastically over the years as mechanical droids like R2-D2, since they wouldn't necessarily have to deal with changing technological and mechanical requirements and would basically just keep doing the same tasks in the same ways. As such, if droids like C-3PO are more common and more consistent, then it would be easier to find compatible parts for C-3PO than it would for R2-D2.
  • As far as I can tell, R2-D2's timeline is; He's with his Master when Luke's Academy gets trashed by Ren and Co; His master then goes missing (he claims to be searching for the First Jedi Temple, but never comes back) so Artoo goes into low power mode either waiting for his Master to return, or in grief; Artoo then hears that somebody has a way of finding Luke so powers back up to give access to the Imperial star charts that he lifted from the Death Star to help Rey and Chewbacca find where to fly the Falcon; He goes with Rey and Chewbacca on the Falcon to find his Master; His Master, at first, doesn't want to see him (assuming Luke even knows that R2 is on-board the Falcon); Luke then bumps into Artoo after sneaking on-board the Falcon; Artoo realises that Luke no longer needs him, and he's got a new set of owners to adopt that need him around so they don't die prematurely (Rey and Chewbacca), problem is there isn't really anywhere for him to plug into on the Falcon because of Han's No Droids Are Interfacing With My Ship policy so at the end of the film, he's got nothing to do.
• R2 is clearly shown at the end of he film boosting the signal on Rey's beacon so that the Falcon can track the Resistance survivors while they make their way through the underground caves. That's how Rey knows where to put the Falcon down to get the survivors in the first place. Between that and the cheap move with the Leia hologram, once more R2-D2 saves the galaxy.
• He also briefly appears when Rey leaves the Falcon to board Snoke's ship.

What happened to C- 3 PO's red arm?

• It seems he starts this movie without the red arm, despite the fact that there's no timeskip between VII and VIII
  • Is there no timeskip? The fact that the First Order seems to have taken over most of the Galaxy seems to imply there was some timeskip. Maybe the Rey scene at the end of the previous movie was supposed to happen a while later than everything else.
  • It is a bit puzzling. There's a part of me imagining that whilst the rest of the base is busy with the evacuation, Threepio sat there with a spray can of metallic gold paint that he's found and a buffing cloth.
• He had a gold arm at the end of The Force Awakens. Maybe he changed it while Rey was preparing to go to Luke's planet.
  • He was so excited about Luke coming back, he wanted to make sure that Luke recognized him.
• He probably had gold paint or plating put on it.

The nameless Master Codebreaker

• Finn and Rose spend most of the movie on a side quest to recruit a "Master Codebreaker". Why the heck does this guy remain entirely nameless throughout the film? Maz clearly knows the guy. She knows him well enough to pinpoint which casino he'll be visiting and what sort of decoration he'll wear. She's even got enough time (in the middle of a firefight) to describe him as being "a poet with a blaster". So why doesn't she ever mention his name? Like, what the heck are we supposed to do if we get to Space Vegas and we can't find the guy, either because he took the night off or because he's wearing something different today? Wouldn't it be nice to know the guy's name, so you can try to look him up in the Space Phone Book or whatever? I noticed that they were dancing around any mention of the name during the film, so I thought "Oh ok, it's gonna be revealed that he's actually someone we already know." Like maybe they meet the "Master Codebreaker" and it turns out that he's Lando or whatever. But that didn't happen. Instead, it appears that the writers just couldn't be bothered to name the guy. What's up with that?
  • He is probably a highly wanted criminal and as a master slicer could easily have a dozen fake identities to use. Maybe the flower is a code meaning "I'm looking for a job" that only a select few in the criminal world would know about?
  • Also, from real-life standpoint: It is possible that when the scene with Maz was shot, there was still possibility for some cameo (most likely Lando) to happen and they left it ambiguous to either not spoil the surprise, or to leave him unknown character.

Yoda channeling Thor

• So Force Ghosts can manipulate the weather and throw lightning bolts? Could they always do that, or have they evolved the ability somehow? Can't help thinking that this could have come in handy about a hundred times by now.
  • I'd honestly assume that it's as simple as this being less a Force Ghost-thing, and more a Yoda-thing. Yoda being as powerful and in-tune with the Force as he was, it really wouldn't surprise me that he specifically can do things other Force Ghosts can't. Not to mention, they're on a sacred Jedi territory that is deeply Force connected; the area they're in likely is able to respond to Force powers in special ways.
  • Lightning is basically created by friction in the air that charges the cloud. A Jedi could possibly use their telekinetic power to do just that to charge a cloud and create lightning. A Jedi could possibly do more than just lift rocks. Like how in X-Men The Last Stand, Jean Grey was using her telekinetic abilities to disintegrate people. Why can't a Jedi do that?
  • Dude... strike them down, and they become more powerful than you can imagine.
  • If that's the case, then what's going to stop Luke from coming back as a Ghost and bringing down electric vengeance on Kylo and the First Order?
  • Exactly the same reasons that stops them frying things with UNLIMITED POWER! whilst still alive. Harming others with lightning is the Dark Side. Burning down a dead and empty tree, not so much. I would imagine merging with the Light side of the Force would actually make it impossible to channel the Dark Side.
  • Yoda manipulated the weather. Probably not so useful without clouds or indoors.
  • Or without an atmosphere.
  • It could also be that such things are only possible at places so in tune with the Force as the site of first Jedi temple. Although it does raise the question why didn't Luke become one with Force first, and then projected his image to Krait without any effort.
    • Because most people would rather not die if it can be avoided. I'm not sure Luke knew he was going to die, even if he was prepared to accept that possibility.
  • It seems that Yoda couldn't appear to Luke until he opened himself to the Force again. So Yoda couldn't just appear on Snoke's ship and zorch him or Kylo Ren, because Snoke isn't open to the light side in a way that would allow Yoda to appear to him.
  • But he appears when Luke is about to burn down what is, as far as he knows, the last remnants of the Jedi legacy. How could that be the moment when he finally opens himself to the Force and not detaches from it completely?
  • Luke very obviously opened himself to the Force while trying to determine where Rey was and what she was doing. Leia suddenly sensed him again (despite being comatose), and he could tell that Rey and Kylo Ren were talking with each other, and then it was Luke who blew away the walls of the hut away from around him when he confronted her and Ben. After that he didn't close himself off again - leaving the door open for Yoda to appear to him.

Luke's Exile

• I still don't get it. Why was Luke in exile? I mean yeah, he made a mistake, Kylo turned to the dark side, and he blames himself for that. Ok, fine. But even if he's 100% convinced that he must never train another Jedi, why can't he stay personally involved in the Resistance? Why doesn't he try to track down Kylo Ren in order to fix his great mistake (either by killing him or by converting him back to the Light Side of the Force)? And even if he never wants to face Kylo again, why does he abandon his sister and his best friend (Han)? Rey explains that Leia is in mortal danger, and that Han is already dead. If Luke had been more involved, he might've been able to save Han from Kylo! And he's got Chewy and R2 there to back up the story, in case he doesn't want to take Rey's word for it. One thing we know about Luke is that he's dedicated to Han and Leia; in ESB he's really insistent on helping them, even when Obi-wan and Yoda tell him to stay away. So now he finds out that Han is dead and Leia is in danger, and he decides to just sit around and do nothing? It doesn't make sense. And then, why does he end his exile and get involved again? Because Yoda shows up and says some stuff about how dusty old books aren't super important, and also that students tend to surpass their teachers. That's it? That's what changes his mind? Why does that persuade him, when Rey's report didn't move him at all?
  • One he probably had some kind of depression. Two when that happened the FO did not exist as a military superpower with dreams of conquest. At least not openly, so Luke had no reason to fear the rebirth of the Empire. He probably thought that anything he would do to rectify the situation would only make it worse. Then he cut himself from the force and could not feel the growing despair and darkness in the galaxy. So Rey + Yoda + feeling again what the general mood is especially sensing his sister again sprang him back into action.
  • That answers why he went into exile in the first place and why he didn't immediately return once the FO got going, but it doesn't explain why he still wants to remain exiled even after Rey and Chewie show up personally and deliver the news. I feel like he ought to jump straight into the fight once he knows that Han is dead and Leia is in danger. His stubbornness just strikes me as a contrived problem.
  • To the above, Luke had come to reject the idea that he in particular and the Jedi in general were that consequential to maintaining light and hope in the galaxy. He tells Rey the idea is "pure vanity," and he sees the belief as the cause of more problems than solutions (i.e. he blames the Jedi for Darth Sidious' rise to power, and his belief in his own legendary status as the cause of Kylo's fall). As such he believes that getting involved again, even to help his sister, will only cause more problems. Ultimately he realizes its his own self-loathing and clinging to the past clouding his judgment, as Yoda explains in his statements about how important it is for Luke to pass on knowledge of his failures as well as his triumphs. And of course shutting himself off from the Force for years likely didn't help him either.
  • It should also be noted that Luke isn't being stubborn. He has PTSD and PTSD sucks beyond the telling of it. It's only a wonder that he got over it so quickly after talking to Yoda, but I guess the Force really is a powerful ally.
  • It still doesn't justify not making an effort to persuade his nephew to come back, whom he is partly responsible for turning to the dark side, or at least clear up the misunderstanding. Plus he'd been through worse, parent figures getting gruesomely murdered, getting his hand chopped off, father turned out to be a notorious war criminal, his sister unknowingly made out with him etc.
  • His sister unknowingly made out with him etc. It always baffles me just how squicked out people are that Luke and Leia shared a single kiss back when they had absolutely no idea that they were related. They didn't even reach second base. If I was them, and had suffered every horrible thing they had, it wouldn't even blip my radar, and I would handle it exactly how they were treating it in Return of the Jedi: Shrugged my shoulders, not thought about it again, and then swiftly moved on with my life.
    • Yes, with everything that happened to Luke during the Galactic Civil War still didn't faze him, he should be hardened enough to not get too affected by Ben's incident and at least try reconciling with Kylo instead of running off and hiding in shame and blaming the Jedi Order's ideals for being flawed for the entire time.
  • From what I understood, Luke is devastated by his moment of weakness, and blames his own status of legend (and his perceived arrogance) for it. In other words, he believes that the reason he failed, and the turning of Ben Solo to be because of the blind faith, and the incredible burden that comes with being the one people turn to to save the day. By exiling himself, Luke is trying to say and prove to the galaxy that:
    • Jedi are not needed. To think that only a Jedi can save the day, that only a Jedi can understand the force, and by himself is foolish. Anyone can save the galaxy, or rather, it is the combined effort of everyone which can save the galaxy. That is why he cut himself off from the force and is content to let the Jedi go extinct.
    • He, Luke Skywalker, is not needed. You do not need to be from a bloodline, you do not need to wield a "laser sword", you do not need the Force or anything to make a difference. The film's Aesop seems to be "anyone can be a hero, regardless of the past, if he wishes to be", but at this point, Luke's view seems more to be heroes are only found in myths, not one person can be all powerful champion of the light and good, not even him, the one they claim is sooooooo powerful.
  • There's an old saying about a piece of straw and a camel's back that seems relevant here. Is it truly so hard to believe that what happened with Kylo might have just been the last piece of trauma and pain that Luke could stand before breaking entirely? Even heroes have their limits.
  • ^Especially if we take into account that "what happened with Kylo" was him murdering half a dozen people for whom Luke was a mentor. That's more like a ton of bricks than a straw.
  • Luke may also have feared giving in to the Dark Side himself if he jumped back into the fray. Just sensing the darkness in Ben was enough to tempt Luke to do the unthinkable; he perhaps feared becoming the scourge of the galaxy, even worse than Kylo OR Vader.
  • I mean it must be hard to work with your sister knowing you thought about killing her son so he just sit this one out.
  • Well... pretty much everything he cared about that wasn't his sister, her husband, and one of their friends had been destroyed. Then when he went looking for answers he found the original Jedi texts which made him realize how far the old Order had drifted from the core beliefs and how hypocritical they'd gotten. Confronted with the duality and balance of light and dark that didn't included completely exiling the dark as the old Jedi order had taught Luke had a mental freaking breakdown. The guilty and pain, anger and helplessness, and ultimately feeling like he was nothing but a problem for the galaxy Luke left figuring the world would be better off without him accidentally bringing yet more Sith into existence. As part of this he cut himself off from the force so that he wouldn't have to deal with any more force crap that could make him feel hurt.

Spreading Luke's Legend of Hope

• Just how did the Tales and Legends of Luke's Finest Hour reach the fearful citizens of The Galaxy when the (two dozen at best) Resistance Heroes were too busy fleeing to have even witnessed it...Which leaves the ONLY eyewitnesses being the First Order Military, to whom it would be in their best interest to not spread the legend of Luke Skywalker to inspire further Hope in the populace (and therefore disorder and rebellion). Yet, the finale CLEARLY shows even slave children, who would have NO access to the Holonet or Mass-Media in general, telling vivid re-enactments (with dolls) of Luke's Last Stand against Kylo-Ren before the AT-AT walkers, that they would not be privy to unless an adult gave them an eyewitness account. So just how did The Legend of Luke Skywalker's Final Valiant Stand spread to the People of The Galaxy without word of mouth? Especially in an oppressive regime that would surely restrict access of the Holonet and Televised media for Civilians?
  • There are three possibilities:
    1. The story is told by the Force sensitive boy. He saw a vision.
    2. The story being told is Luke surviving against the command blaster power of several AT-ATs. An event that was witnessed by the Resistance.
    3. The story is filled in. Luke came, he died, they survived. The details don't matter.
    4. 4th possibility: Rey "saw" everything, either through the Force, or by Luke sending her the vision. It's Rey who spreads the story of Jedi Master Luke Skywalker's last stand. We also don't know how long passes between the end of the battle of Crait and the end of the film. We know the Force Sensitive has a Resistance ring, it's entirely possible he's now a Resistance contact and has heard the story being passed on through a now growing Resistance.
  • And all of that assumes that the First Order has taken over the galaxy. The Last Jedi doesn't do a lot of world building, and ends maybe a week or two, in-universe, after Force Awakens started. It's unlikely that the First Order has the bureaucracy in place to actually control much of the New Republic's former(?) territory.
  • The First Order itself is really big, and there's bound to be people there who just see supporting it as a job, without buying into the ideology (specially now that they seem to have taken back control of most of the Galaxy, going back to being the de facto government). These people could very well spread the story as they saw it, one man survived an entire army being focused on him, without knowing the details (like the fact he wasn't really there).
  • On top of that, the battle on Crait should be the full affirmation of Kylo Ren's power, both as a military leader and as a Force user, but ends up a complete disaster for his reputation. Given that most probably a lot of people within the First Order, beginning from Hux, don't like Ren and the way he's just become the new Supreme Leader, you can bet that they wouldn't really object on at least the rumors about Ren losing his shit in front of Skywalker and being humiliated spread around.
• Perhaps it was propaganda from the First Order itself, trying to twist the events so that it seems that Kylo Ren had the final victory over Luke Skywalker. But it backfired. The populace would focus on the part that the last Jedi master made a glorious Last Stand against the full military strength of the First Order, alone and armed with nothing but a lightsaber... and even if he lost (correction: specially if he lost) that is the stuff of legend, and Legend Fades to Myth.
  • Also worth remembering to begin with that Luke Skywalker is already a mythic figure in the galaxy by this point due to his actions in the Original Trilogy. You don't need a lot of specific detail about what happened, and you don't need a lot of people to do it. You just need someone to tell a few people that the Resistance were about to be destroyed once and for all but then Luke Skywalker, The Last Jedi, basically The Saviour Of The Entire Galaxy, showed up, said a few inspiring words and then walked off to stare down an entire army with only a laser sword for company. That's a story that's gonna spread itself and get much bigger in the telling. And not just by the Resistance either; there's not a single First Order grunt present at that battle who isn't going to be spreading the story of how they just witnessed Luke Skywalker's Last Stand, higher-ups be damned.
  • Just wanna add — "vivid reenactment"? It's a ten-second scene where the kid telling the story is doing so in a different, un-subtitled language. How in the world does that translate to a "vivid" anything? You're making it sound like the kid was giving some kind of detailed, blow-for-blow, line-for-line recreation, when we have no idea what the kid said aside from the words "Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master."
  • Let it also be noted that the First Order are also likely to be in at least some small amount of disunity after the events of the movie. They didn't come through unscathed; their Supreme Leader is dead, their new replacement Supreme Leader is clearly a bit out of his depth, and while it's subtle there are the clear signs of a power struggle in the making (seriously, next time you watch the film check out the look General Hux gives Kylo Ren when the First Order are searching the abandoned rebel base; it is not the look of a man who is going to be cheerfully serving his new boss without undermining and plotting against him at every possible opportunity he can get away with). Even if the First Order would like nothing more than to stop the story of Luke Skywalker's heroic act from spreading hope and resistance to the rest of the galaxy, they don't exactly have the rigidly iron grasp on the situation they'd like either, and I'm pretty sure there is at least one faction that is quite happy for the story to spread so long as it makes Kylo Ren look like an absolute moron who can't tie his shoelaces together.
  • It's worth noting that BEN is now the new leader of FO. Judging from what we've seen of Ben, he seems like the person to order his men to spread the tale of his defeat of Luke, and vastly misjudges what people get out of it.

Why do things fade to myth so fast in the Star Wars universe?

• This is sort of a meta-observation/complaint I've always had, but I felt it could be addressed here as a head scratcher because this movie made me think of it again. You see, I'm actually totally on board with Luke Skywalker being a case of Legend Fades to Myth. A character rejecting their old selves has always been compelling for me, and overall I'm not inherently against the idea of this Old Man Logan/Dark Knight Returns version of Luke Skywalker. However, what bothers me is how fast everything seems to fade. As far as I can tell from Wookieepedia TLJ takes place 34 ABY (in other words, 34 years after the climax of A New Hope), which in my opinion is just not long enough for me to accept. I understand why things go obscure or are even forgotten altogether. From what I've seen the Star Wars don't seem super huge on historical education (there are entire planets of people who don't seem to know nor would need to know such things), and of course Luke Skywalker's story in particular has not one but two oppressive governments possibly suppressing it; the Empire preventing people from hearing about his original heroics in the first place, and the First Order make sure they don't spread or are forgotten. This is of course on top of him being reclusive, general wartime and post-war chaos and restructuring, and firsthand witnesses or chroniclers themselves fading into obscurity or dying off.All of these help me swallow the pill, but nothing can change the fact that any middle-aged to senior person living in Star Wars right now was alive (and would have been old enough to remember) who Luke was and what he did. Sure, under oppressive rule the legend of Luke could only spread and be maintained through word of mouth, but that'd hardly be a problem considering anyone's grandparents (or possibly even parents, depending on when they had kids) would know about it.Consider that date again: 34 ABY. 34 years. Vietnam ended 43 years ago; imagine if we talked about General Westmoreland or Richard Nixon like they were Merlin or King Arthur when there could be an actual still-alive veteran just down the street. I bring up the whole thing about parents and grandparents because the character who originally made me feel weird about all this was Han Solo. In the original trilogy (0 ABY for A New Hope) Han talks about the Jedi the way I might talk about samurai or medieval knights, as figures of history from centuries ago. Let's do some math here; Han Solo is in his late twenties or early thirties in the original trilogy. The Phantom Menace takes place 32 years before a New Hope and the Jedi don't die off until Revenge of the Sith (19 BBY) and if anything would have been known by the whole galaxy at the time due to their highly prominent role in a galaxy-spanning war. So in the span of 19 years something that was known to countless billions of sentient beings is now dismissed as a fairy tale by someone who was probably 9-13 at the time i.e. old enough to remember it personally. And even if Han for whatever reason didn't remember anything about the Jedi himself, it is a mathematical certainty that his parents, grandparents, or even possible older siblings (or whoever he grew up with) would have, to say nothing of pretty much every older person he'd ever work with in his career as a smuggler. Has every mob boss and spice dealer Han's ever talked to had this same historical amnesia? Heck, even the bounty hunter who goes after Han would remember the Jedi on account of his father being killed by one. I can forgive continuity errors and plot holes and acknowledge that the reason they're there is just because things from the prequels like the Clone Wars weren't fleshed out (and weren't meant to be) in the context of the original trilogy. I can also accept that pretty much any prequel is going to introduce errors (i.e. Where was Prequel Character during Original Movie? Why didn't Original Character talk about this enormous event in Prequel?), but this has bothered me for years. You really have no idea how ridiculous it is for something to fade in less than two decades. You've already heard my example about Vietnam but now imagine if the Bush presidency, something which pretty much everyone in their thirties will have memories of, was held right now in the same regard as the long-ago prologue to the Lord of the Rings.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. Also, the Jedi are essentially Buddhist magician warriors in a universe that otherwise operates according to rules of science. Frankly, it'd be weird if they weren't regarded as mythic on some level to begin with.
  • Not that much faster that in our world. Plenty of occurrences from, say, WWII have already grown over with myths, propaganda, errors, forgotten details... What one country holds true and may even back it up, other country may consider a myth/propaganda. And that's just one planet, where evidence is generally not so far away. And this is a legend of a space wizard in a galaxy. You can basically hear the discussion in some bar on Corellia "Ye know, mate, I think this story about farm boy beating the Emperor and Vader with a magic sword is chickenshit. I mean, what are the odds of that ever happening?" "Never tell me the odds..."
  • What exactly "faded into myth" between ANH and TLJ? Rey refers to Luke as a "legend", but I thought it was clear that she meant "legend" in the sense of "a really awesome guy", as opposed to "a character from an ancient presumably-fictional story". (Compare: "Michael Jordan was an amazing basketball player. That guy is a legend".) So no, I don't think anyone developed amnesia about who Luke was or what he did. Nor does anyone in the Sequel Trilogy dismiss the very concept of Jedi. Yes, things were weirder in ANH, where Han dismisses the very idea of the force (and an imperial officer shares that opinion, before Vader chokes him). But although ANH is hard to explain, TLJ is much easier.
    • Rey's exact words when she first heard about Luke were "Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth." In fairness though, she does live on an out of the way backwater planet where news may not spread as quickly.
  • There is only one library in the known universe and it was held by the Jedi. Then it burned. Seriously in twenty or so years they were able to make a clear universal force with midichlorian bacteria empowering people to ancient religion, even with heavy censorship you have to fry private computers of a bunch of place for that.
• To be fair, think about things that happened only shortly before your lifetime or when you were a baby. Things 30 or 40 years ago really do seem like forever ago. While "fading into myth" might be an exaggeration, events and people from not that long ago could really become legends, even if they are still alive. You would only know events and people from stories in the first place. Also consider this: these stories are being told across an entire galaxy. Even in stories we tell, true or otherwise about events and people, it usually focuses on one person even if others are involved. For example, Paul Revere (I was in Boston recently). The story surrounding him is just that - a story. He was a real person, but there were other people involved as well but he received the focus. It could easily be the same for stories told about Luke, that he receives the focus of the story but no one knows what is true and what is embellished, and he becomes a myth and legend.

What exactly killed Luke Skywalker?

• Was it the strain of projecting an image across the Galaxy? Was it a consequence of finally reopening himself to the force? Was it because he had made made peace with his previous failures? Was it because the lightsaber had an effect on his real body when it went through his projected one? The movie doesn't really make this clear.
  • Yes.
  • The way I see it, he didn't so much get "killed" as just give up his life to the Force. This was something he learned how to do from Obi-wan Kenobi and Yoda: when Kenobi saw that Luke & company needed a distraction to help them make an escape in A New Hope, he pulled his final vanishing act just as Darth Vader made the final slash to cut him in half, leaving Vader scratching his head over Kenobi's now-empty robes. When Yoda felt his death throes approaching in Return of the Jedi, he likewise checked out early, sparing himself the final pains of death. At the end, now weary of life and convinced Rey was fit to carry on his legacy, Luke decided to expend the last of his energy taunting Kylo Ren and keeping him busy while the remaining Resistance fighters made their escape, and then go join his predecessors in the afterlife while maybe spending some time haunting his wayward nephew alongside Han Solo. If the way Luke trolled Rey during her training is any indication, Kylo Ren is in for a world of torment from his uncle in this life even before he finds out what the Sith afterlife is like.
  • "You're not doing this. The effort would kill you." - Kylo Ren, when his mind is first linked to Rey's (or words to this effect). Luke later projects an even stronger Force presence across a similarly great distance and fades into oneness with the Force immediately afterward. I don't know how the movie could have made it much clearer without simply reiterating what it had already told us.
  • Well, the odd bit there is that Snoke actually sets up the telepathic link and he doesn't die as a result. So if Snoke can do things like that without dying, why can't Luke?
  • Maybe these are two similar but different powers? Snoke set up a link between two people that had already been into each other's brains, were maybe only visible to force-sensitive people and could only see each other; Luke created two different physical illusions visible by everyone including an army, one of which could be picked up and held and he had to be able to perceive his environment. Also maybe Snoke still "used" some of their power for that, like he just set it up and afterwards it was a collective unconscious effort on both of them?
  • I think Kylo mistook the Force Bond for Astral Projection initially, and that's what he meant by saying it would kill her. Setting up a Force Bond probably isn't dangerous at all.
  • Luke is also an old man at this point (if we go by his actor's age, he's in his mid-to-late sixties at youngest). Any combination of the above would probably have been too much for his body to take.
    • The age of Luke Skywalker is one of the most solidly established facts in Star Wars since Episode III was released. Luke was born in 19 BBY and The Last Jedi is set in 34 ABY. So he's not in his sixties yet, only in his fifties... That said, he is portrayed by an older actor...
    • To be entirely fair, this particular fact sounds like it's only "solidly established" in the "supplementary details that you only know if you've read the manual from cover to cover, which many people probably haven't" sense. You kind of need to know what 'BBY' and 'ABY' are, for a start.
    • Well we *literally* get to see the birth of Luke and Leia Skywalker in Episode III. And it is well known that Episode IV and III are 19 years apart.
    • A fair counterpoint (although I'm obviously not remembering the specific lines of dialogue that establish ages and dates in the films).
  • According to the Jedi Way, one of the IRL books being sold in conjunction with the movies which is considered canon, the force has two parts to it that are interlinked but have different properties. The Living force is what dwells in all people and lets Jedi do most of what they do. Manipulating minds, small scale levitation, and enhanced feats of acrobatics all fall within the Living force. Meanwhile the Cosmic force is what handles much of the bigger stuff like wells of force energy on specific planets and where living creatures go after they die. Luke tapped into the Cosmic force, using its incredible power, to pull off a really big maneuver pouring in a lot of his own life energy into it. When he finally ended the illusion so much of him was in the Cosmic force the rest got pulled along with it joining with the Cosmic force not unlike other force ghosts.
  • A great explanation that would have been even more awesome if it was in the movie.

Are humans the only species still left in the galaxy?

• The main characters of this movie as well as the last one are almost entirely human. Where're all the non-humans or human variants like Chiss? There are maybe three or four non-humans in the entire resistance. (Only one or two have even a speaking line aside from Admiral Ackbar) Chewie barely does a thing. Admiral Ackbar is killed offscreen. Any of the "new" characters are human. Star Wars is a very diverse galaxy, why's every single important character human? Did the First Order commit genocide (much more thoroughly than the Empire did) and all the other non-humans on places like Jakku and Totally-Not-Nar-Shaddaa not mind?
  • Whether it's justified or not this is not a new thing. That is the "human" characters (plus some droids) have always made up the vast majority of the important Star Wars characters in the main live action movies, with the blatantly alien races being largely minor or background characters or villains (Jar Jar was comedy relief and only all that important in one movie, making Yoda and Chewie among the few obvious aliens with large recurring roles). This is compounded in The Last Jedi due to how most of the movie takes place in limited locations (a small island, a single large ship, a deserted base) and introduces only a couple of new remotely important characters. One justification could be that the Republic and thus the Rebellion was largely human (supplementary materials state that a large number of planets refused to become part of the new Republic), and with most of the galaxy having surrendered to the First Order the remnants of the Rebellion are still largely human. If nothing else we see on the trip to that high-class planet of war profiteers that there are still plenty of non human species around.
  • All the non-humanoid aliens were sent to a special mission. It was a trap.
  • Actually what makes the lack of Aliens even more non-sensical is that the Empire discriminated against many non-human species, leading them to support the rebellion at least indirectly. In some unique cases, such as the Mon Calamari and the Ithorians, the entire races joined the rebellion. Thus if anything the majority of those in the resistance should be aliens from a lore standpoint. Most main characters being human is understandable since it would be difficult to portray emotions on an alien, however, this wouldn't matter for background characters.
  • Because humans are cheaper that puppets, Serkis Folk or prosthetics.

Allies in the Outer Rim

• Who were the allies that Leia allegedly had in the Outer Rim and how were they supposed to help against the First Order? The film makes a point to emphasize that the Resistance is so small and poorly-funded that they do not even have enough fuel to top off the tanks on their only capital ship. If they had allies that were capable of even considering an engagement with a fleet of First Order star destroyers then why were they so under-equipped in the first place?
  • The most obvious allies would be Kashyyyk (Chewie's home world), Tatooine (Luke's homeworld), Naboo (with whom Luke and Leia would have likely re-connected with in the intervening years after the Civil War) and Corellia (Han's Home world).
  • A potential wild-card can be Kamino, which would make Kylo-Ren's remark of "Maybe the Supreme Leader should field an army of obedient clones" in The Force Awakens all the more deliciously ironic.
  • Probably worlds that secretly founded them or whose government supported them but were unwilling to start an open war.
  • And assuming Billy Dee Williams is still game? Bespin, ruled by one King Lando Calrissian, is also an Outer Rims World. He is among the wealthiest and best funded of The Rebel Alliance, and since he personally loved the Rebel Heroes like family, would more than likely do his part in The New War if he could. ("For Leia.")
  • You've also got the Hutts , who I imagine have learned not to mess with Leia.
  • Excellent point! Even back in the Civil War the Hutts were wealthy, powerful and well-armed enough that The Empire Itself hesitated to interfere with Tatooine or Hutt Space politics, and adopted a "live and let live" policy when it came to Hutt Controlled Worlds. Imagine the sheer manpower (not to mention firepower and monetary power) that can come to bear if Nal-Hutta (the Hutt Home world) can be made to sign the treaty of Resistance.
  • And then again.... sigh... since someone will bring it up eventually, the Ewoks of Endor do worship C-3PO as their God, so they would join the good fight without even being asked. And jokes aside, these are the same brave warriors whose ferocity and cunning helped to topple the last tyrannical regime.
  • This is not so much ally as an Invaluable Outer Rim World that the Resistance would be stupid not to use. The Battle Droid Factories that lie dormant on Geonosis after The Clone Wars. Once re-commissioned, these factories would be a goldmine of literally un-limited (and completely loyal and obedient) troops that will turn the tide (not to mention an additional poetic-irony of a Heroic-Army of Droids fighting Evil Troopers). The Geonosians have been all but wiped out to a single young queen after the Clone Wars when their race outlived Palpatine's immediate use, and therefore she and her few remaining children would naturally have a huge bone to pick with remaining legacies of The Empire like The First Order, and happily join Leia's cause. And when there are NO warriors in this current era of Obi-Wan Kenobi or Mace Windu's caliber, even a single droideka/destroyer droid will decimate'' entire First Order Battalions of Stormtroopers.
  • Coruscant itself has a massive defensive fleet that could be mobilized. In the old stories, it held off an entire imperial assault under Thrawn.
    • Coruscant 1. Was a Core World and 2. the Capital of the Republic; most of its military assets would have been moved with the Government. For more on that, see "Where's the Republic?"
  • Considering the rebel alliance did not use those I will guess that either they had no Ragnarök Proofing or the Empire did the smart thing for once and blasted the Separatist factories to oblivion.
  • I can't remember if Mandalore is an Outer Rim world but joining an out-numbered and out-gunned war against a technological superpower? This is the kind of odds they live for.
  • This is the perfect way to bring an aging Boba Fett (now LORD of the Mandalorians) back into the current Star Wars universe, which will tie up as neat as a ribbon to his highly anticipated stand-alone film. :)
  • Lets face it, if there's anyone leading the Mandalorians in the new canon, it's going to be Sabine Wren.
  • And let's not forget that we know the names of a score of worlds in the Million-system Republic. Look at the size of the Senate Hall in the prequels. There are trillions of people in the galaxy, many of which would fight and die after the First Order unleashed a planet-killer.
• Where is Hera Syndulla? She lives to fight for the republic and if Leia puts out a distress call she would respond to it, no matter what. And Hera brings the Ghost crew in tow. They would all join in. I mean, even if they couldn't get to Crait in time, The rebellion getting a response from them once they are on the Falcon makes sense. And Forces of Destiny shows Hera survives Episode 6.
  • The Ghost Crew also includes two force users, a Lasat, a Mandalore with VERY high respect among her people, a defected Empire agent, POSSIBLY a pirate who likes them, and Hera herself who is one of the best pilots in Star Wars history. They should at least have responded.
  • It's a very long time since Rebels. Hera's appearance in Rogue One was a little bit of a spoiler as it was, and that was only a year or so in the future. Hera would be 64 years old by Last Jedi, and likely in sunny retirement. Zeb would be 78! Given the direction of Sabine Wren's arc she might well be Queen of Mandalore, and not in the position to act hastily when there's a planet destroying superweapon in play.
  • Plus potentially a billion other worlds we've never heard of because, well, this is a galaxy we're talking about.

Only one business?

• Ignoring the Anvilicious Anti-Capitalist point behind the speech, How is war the only business that get you rich enough to go to Canto Bight? This is acting like the Star Wars Universe is always stuck in a Forever War which it isn't. The galaxy was in a relative peace for 1,000 years before the Clone Wars and realistically there are other ways to get that rice without resorting to War for Fun and Profit. After all the MegaCorps that formed the Separatist didn't get rich solely on war. The Trade Federation was an intergalactic shipping company that did plenty of legitimate business before the events of The Phantom Menace. The InterGalatic Banking Clan minted currency, the Techno Union built factories for other manufacturers ^note  and just to continue on why didn't need war, some of their signatories like TaggeCo where involved in foodstuff and others like Baktoid Armor Workshop (at least before the Battle Of Naboo) made heavy duty industrial vehicles. etc. Other companies like Corellian Engineering Corpation, Industrial Automation, and Cybot Galactica made it to the top of their respective fields with just sales for the every non-military market out there. However, I honestly think the idea proposed in the film's Russian dub where Finn said "ore" instead of "war" is one of the best. After all think about it. In any science fiction setting like Star Wars, the richest people are going to be the ones with mining interests. It doesn't matter what they are mining be it Unobtainium, basic minerals like iron, or fuel, all of those are needed to keep the galaxy running. Mining one of these would make you rich enough to have own an entire planet all of those and you could easily make it to the top of the Fiction500. Look at the Commerce Guild who another separatist founder incidentally. They didn't a war to get to the position they were at. In short I would have to say war is not one the business to get you super-rich in Star Wars as other alternatives exist particularly mining.
  • I think it's pretty obvious with more than ten seconds of thought that he was not literally saying that war was, completely literally, the single, only business that anyone at the casino had ever been involved in. As you point out, the very idea is completely and utterly absurd, and I think it's safe to assume that the writers were not so utterly ignorant as one would have to be to try and make that point.
  • It is entirely possible that Canto Bight was just a high-class version of Jabba's palace. The galaxy is, well, a galaxy after all and there is no shortage of planets with fabulous environments. Wealthy beings who make their money in more legitimate businesses probably have their own preferred resort destinations. The clientele at Canto Bight seems to favor shady types. Finn and Rose were there looking for a master-codebreaker after all! Like Jabba's palace, Canto Bight was probably packed with criminals. The difference being that they were rich criminals, as opposed to the low-lifes that clustered around Jabba.

Where's the Republic?

• In the Force Awakens, the First Order effectively declared war on the Republic by nuking their capital system. In the crawl for Last Jedi, it says they've been "Decimated", except: It's been, at most, a few weeks since Force Awakens opening scenes, Starkiller Base was destroyed after it's first firing, and there's been no mention of the Republic on screen since then. The Republic has to have a military still out there, otherwise it wouldn't have taken a superweapon to destroy the Republic's capital, but Leia's efforts for reinforcements are all about trying to contact the comparatively poor Outer Rim for help, and not all the planets that the First Order's declared war on? Something's screwy here.
  • Various tie-in novels showcase that the Republic has basically gotten way too complacent. The reason Leia had to start the Resistance in the first place was the Republic leadership refusing to treat the First Order as anything but a minor rag-tag collection of former Imperials rather than the huge force they truly were. The entire Republic fleet was around the Hosnian System and thus wiped out by the attack so there are no reinforcements coming.
  • Not to beat a dead horse about the world building, but they probably should've shown that in the actual freakin' film if there was a fleet there getting obliterated. But yeah, that explains some of it.
  • Rewatch the scene of the destruction closely and there are clearly numerous ships around the planets that go up in fire with them.
  • Even if we didn't know the fleet was destroyed, we know several of their planets were totally destroyed. Imagine if ISIS nuked Washington DC, New York, and several other major US cities in the same day. Even if you've got troops in ISIS territory who could deliver a counterstrike, the resultant panic is probably enough that you're in no condition to send in reinforcements.^note  Not the best analogy, since it assumes no other military bases in the area, which is apparently true for the Republic but not for the US. But you get the picture
  • Also, remember, that Starkiller Base didn't blow up one planet but a system. The entire Senate was taken out along with almost their entire fleet and various support worlds. Right now, there is no leadership to the Republic and frankly, the terror at what the First Order is capable of is leaving them cowed. It's likely what worlds remain are more interested in protecting themselves than joining a seemingly suicidal battle against a force so strong.
  • One system shouldn't mean much to a GALACTIC republic. I mean, if you blow up Washington DC, is the entire USA completely and instantly crippled? Is the entire army housed right next door to the Senate? It simply doesn't make sense.
  • There should still be some fleet vessels out there. And while that might all be true, you still need to put it in the bloody film. Force Awakens didn't show any fleets getting destroyed, and the Last Jedi's only mention of the Republic is in the title crawl.
  • It's also possible that the destruction of Starkiller Base is not known throughout the galaxy yet. Even if with some awkward Hand Wave in extra Canon material, it's been established that SB's shots traveled through hyperspace, which would also make tracing their source extremely difficult. Even if some signs of a planet being destroyed were eventually picked up on some system, they even may think it's been the First Order again. Basically, right now the people of galaxy may be terrified by a weapon that can strike you basically anywhere... that just isn't there anymore.
  • OP here, and yeah, that makes sense. It's part of the limited time frame of the Sequel Trilogy so far, just not many people have had time to stop and catch their breath.
  • The Visual Guide books have filled in some blanks. First of all, the New Republic was never as large as the Old Republic as, after so much war and tyranny, many worlds preferred to work on their own rather than join a new government. Second, it states that immediately after the Republic capital was destroyed, hundreds of planets surrendered to the First Order before word of Starkiller Base being wiped out was revealed. So the Republic was already in a weaker state and now made worse.
  • There's also the fact that any one from the Republic still alive would have no idea where they are. The Resistance spends the entire movie near an uncharted planet and only gets means of communication at the very end. If anyone managed to gather enough troops to actually do something against the First Order they probably wrote the Resistance off as MIA and went to do their own thing.
  • It was quite openly revealed in dialogue that the Republic's fleet were destroyed during the destruction of their capital. Hux even frames that as the primary objective, with destroying the Republic's government a bonus.
  • It makes no sense for the entire military capability of the New Republic to be confined to their capital system. The galaxy is too big for that.
  • I really do not accept the Republic is complacent as an acceptable answer when it has only been thirty years since the Emperor fell and suddenly we have this force coming along that is using all of the same symbols, methods and icons. This would be like if in 1970 Germany started to build up its army again (complete with brownshirts and SS uniforms) and then started to harass Poland. There are still enough people in the world who remember the first time round to sit up and take notice.
  • Also, plenty of EU materials state that the New republic encouraged member worlds to spend their money on local defense forces, rather than funding a massive Republic military. Shouldn't this mean that the tens of thousands of member worlds collectively possess a huge amount of military assets? Whatever people's opinion of Leia was after word about Darth Vader being her father got out, you would expect that the destruction of the Hosnian System would turn public opinion in the Resistance's favor literally overnight. Especially since Leia had telemetry from the X-wings that attacked Starkiller Base to prove that it was destroyed.

Lack of familiarity in the Resistance

• To all appearances the Resistance is a lot smaller than the old Rebel Alliance. So why does it seem like Poe and Holdo barely know each other? He's their wing commander and she's an admiral. It's not like this is a vast military like those of the Empire or the First Order. The Resistance base at D'Qar was tiny. Unless she spends most of her time off working the social circuit (possible given her unprofessional hair and clothing choices) on other worlds one would expect her to have known Poe almost as well as Leia. Likewise, what is with this obsession with military hierarchy? That is also a big difference from the Rebel Alliance, where the lowest grunts were frequently exposed to the top brass. Given that the Resistance seems to be floundering, whereas the Alliance won the Galactic Civil War, you would kind of expect Leia, formerly a high-ranking leader in the Alliance, to aim for similar camaraderie rather than creating a miniature version of the dysfunctional and status-obsessed Republic. Which was already acknowledged as being broken, thus necessitating the Resistance to begin with.
  • The Resistance might be less formal than the Order or Empire, but it's still a military, and thus it needs to be organized and have a chain of command. Not everyone is going to know everyone else.
  • Missing the point. The Resistance is very small. Small enough for an officer to know every single fighter pilot personally! They do not have a true fleet or numerous installations. The entire Resistance couldn't crew a single star destroyer. They are pretty much an Suspiciously Small Army for a galactic-scale conflict. Just remember that they lost more than half of their fighters in TFA alone.
  • I don't think it's that small. It looked to me like there were hundreds of people on the rebel ships, even after their losses in the opening battle. How many transport vessels were they sending to Crait? A dozen? Probably more? Even if we assume that there were only about fifty people on each ship, that's still 600 or so people. Poe wouldn't be expected to know everyone personally. Admiral Holdo is admittedly different, since as you point out, she's an admiral and he's a commander. However, Holdo clearly isn't the highest up in the Resistance hierarchy, she's just the highest ranking officer they had left after Admiral Ackbar and anybody else who knew what they were doing perished. And because of their mother/adopted son dynamic, Poe is consistently shown reporting directly to Leia, bypassing the need for him to go through any other officers, even though they outrank him. He might know the admirals from strategy meetings and the like, but Poe seems like the kind of guy to just say "Where am I pointing my squadron?" and be done with it. He's very passionate about his piloting, but seems to have little contact with the politics/administration of the Resistance, so he might not be involved in a lot of the conferences Leia would have with other higher-ups. And the Resistance has more than one admiral — surely they would each have different duties to oversee (as you pointed out for Holdo, maybe recruiting?) and overseeing the X-Wings was probably never Holdo's job. (She's conspicuously absent from the decision-making about the attack on Starkiller base, which basically boiled down to 'send in the X-Wings'.) So Poe at least knows who Admiral Holdo is, he just might not have a reason to know her well. As for the obsession with military hierarchy, I don't know that it's strictly an obsession — Leia clearly makes friends outside her station, and Poe can hang out with a First Order defector who showed up out of nowhere and still seems to have no defined position in the Resistance. I got the idea that Admiral Holdo herself just had a more "military" attitude than the rest of them, probably because she came from a "real" military before she joined the Resistance.
  • If Holdo were from a "real" military beforehand then she would have known the importance of presenting a professional image to those under her command (i.e. wearing a uniform, not a cocktail dress). Also, hundreds of people is not a large number. Many schools and most large corporations have more people milling around than that. Often a lot more! Indeed, the problem with introducing Holdo, rather than using one of the existing admirals like Ackbar or Statura is that she was not in TFA and thus sort of just comes out of nowhere, struts in wearing her gown and starts snubbing all the lowly personnel she deems beneath her. This is very weird in an organization this small. It also sends a conflicting message of military discipline (expecting orders to be followed without question) despite the absence of military protocol (admirals out of uniform during battle situations).
  • Hundreds of people is not a large number to be an army facing the First Order, but it's a large enough number that I wouldn't expect every person to know each other, which was what I was focusing on. I was also being conservative in my estimates, as I think there were probably more like a hundred or more people on each transport before most of them got blown up, although that's still small. I do concede that the Resistance appears smaller than would probably be viable vs. the FO, and that they are indeed ridiculously small now if they can all fit on the Millennium Falcon (although it is an old smuggling ship with more space than it might look like). But most of my argument is in regards to how Poe and Holdo wouldn't necessarily have a lot of contact if she never oversaw the X-Wings and he doesn't generally worry about dealing with anyone outside of General Leia. It also occurred to me that his close relationship with Leia might be the reason Poe has a bit of chip on his shoulder. When they talk about someone taking over for Leia while she's recovering, Poe actually thinks he might be next in line, even though he doesn't really possess the leadership and administrative skills to do Leia's job. But he's best friends with the boss and Leia makes no secret of how important he is to her — why wouldn't he think it would be his job to take over? Also I remembered that Holdo isn't actually an admiral — she's a vice-admiral, which would be lower than Ackbar or other existing admirals. Leia clearly trusts her, but her lower rank may give Poe even less reason to come in contact with her given his unique position in the Resistance (a commander, but one with the ear of the general). I earlier commented that he's probably not going to be involved in a lot of higher-ups' meetings, but even if he were to attend/drop by any of said meetings, they might be the highest of the higher-ups' meetings, and Holdo might not have been present at them. This gives Poe even less reason to trust her, since in his eyes she's some random lower-ranked leader he wouldn't even see as part of Leia's inner circle. He clearly goes into the situation suspicious and with no small amount of resentment that she's suddenly in charge. You make a good point about her outfit, but just because it doesn't look professional to us doesn't necessarily mean it's not "professional" in the Star Wars universe. Queen Amidala wore all kinds of wacky stuff and General Leia, a general who is the very top officer of the Resistance wears dresses and styles her hair. I think the Resistance is more lax when it comes to outfits and such, so Holdo wouldn't worry so much about dress code, but they do have structure, so she would worry about her orders being questioned or not taken seriously. The Resistance is not a perfect military, and Holdo certainly doesn't handle the situation perfectly (it might have been nice for Leia to have a line about Holdo's own mistakes, but Leia was asleep during them and didn't really have the opportunity to hear Poe's side of things before Holdo went to her death), but I don't think Holdo's behavior and dress style is necessarily conflicting in this universe — hell, it seems like the good guys of Star Wars get more respect from their subordinates if they're dressed nicely. Introducing Holdo as a new character is a narrative choice with its own hiccups, but I think it works in order to create the situation the film was after. The audience already knows and loves Poe, so we're supposed to be annoyed when some new character pops up and snubs him, which also keeps us in the dark as to her motives, because if it had been Ackbar running things we would have sat back and trusted him no problem. And meta stuff aside, this sort of thing is why the First Order targeted the bridge that Leia was on in the first place — like any military with halfway decent tactics, they killed the top brass so that the subordinates would hopefully be left floundering. And they kind of were.
• The Resistance might not be big so much as it was expansive, with cells operating in disparate parts of the Galaxy against the First Order. Supplementary fluff claims that the starships in Leia's fleet had been recalled to D'Qar to assist with the evacuation, so presumably Vice Admiral Holdo, aboard Ninka, had never been in the same place as Poe up to this point. They were part of the same organization, and knew each other by reputation, but had never met in person.
  • High turnover rate, why bother knowing that guy's name when his head is gonna go boom tomorrow?
  • Poe is established in Resistance as spending a lot of time on personal missions working directly for Leia and managing cells in and around First Order operations.

How is Leia this far behind Luke, Anakin and Kylo?

• Seriously, why are her Force powers so undeveloped? Return of the Jedi ends with the Skywalker siblings standing side-by-side underneath the gaze of Anakin, Yoda and Obi-Wan - three of the greatest Jedi who ever lived. I always thought that the implication was that that the Jedi had now returned and that Leia would go on to train with Luke in the ways of the Force and make her own lightsaber etc and then go on to form a new generation of Jedi. Now true, we learn that Luke kind of went on to do this, but she clearly wasn't involved in any meaningful way. Why all of this scramble to find Luke Skywalker when you have a Skywalker right there? Why can't she train Rey? As far as I can tell from on-screen evidence, she has a bit of telekinesis, a bit of telepathy, and can see Force Ghosts. When compared to what her brother, father, and son is capable of, that is incredibly lame.
  • It's because she became involved in politics (founding the New Republic, preparing for the threat of the First Order, that kind of thing) rather than pursuing any Jedi training. If I remember right, her official political career was brought to an end by a political opponent revealing who her father was. It's also wildly unlikely that the New Republic would have welcomed having Leia's help if they discovered that she was a Force user, especially a Jedi; let's face it, you don't want to be in the position of constantly worrying that your or somebody else's decisions are constantly being swayed by somebody else's use of the old Jedi Mind Trick.
  • Leia far exceeds Luke, Anakin and (especially) Kylo in political and military matters. This is not an accident. She was an Imperial Senator and (according to George Lucas) had the equivalent of a doctorate at age 19! The Force has just never been the central focus of her life what with the Rebellion, the New Republic and the Resistance. She is still capable of some amazing feats due to her great potential, but it is less focused than with the members of her family who have made the Force the central aspect of their lives.

Where does the First Order get its funding?

• It's explicitly stated that selling weapons to the First Order is extremely lucrative. Yet this is a faction that has been relegated to the unknown regions for most of its existence (I'm assuming it's called the "unknown" regions rather than the "remote" regions because it wasn't worth colonizing, otherwise it would have been a part of the Old Republic long before Palpatine took over). As those who are amoral enough to trade with a brutal military Junta probably wouldn't gift weapons through charity, where does the First Order get the cold, hard cash or the resources to trade while regulated to an undeveloped, comparatively worthless region of space?
  • You're asking how immoral Force users can make money? What you can't make with the Jedi mind trick you steal through choking them on the other side of a screen until they give you their account details. And they may even not need to do that if they have even a few rich allies. Ask yourself this: how did the relatively unknown Senator Palpatine gain the services of the Trade Federation to build his army? Charisma and promises of even more wealth and power once you win are powerful motivators.
  • One logical possibility is that when the remnants of the Empire fled to the unknown regions they took a great deal of valuable technology and resources with them. Further, from what I recall according to side materials, for a long time their efforts to rebuild their military strength relied heavily on most of the galaxy not knowing they were doing it, so they worked instead through criminals, smugglers, etc. The New Republic being far smaller than the old one and thus having less influence would have made all this rebuilding easier too due to their own lack of resources to monitor the galaxy (even back at the height of its power the Republic's influence only spread so far, as evidenced by how some planets ignored their laws against slavery and such).
  • There is no reason to assume the Unknown Regions are worthless. A galaxy is stupidly huge and the Galactic civilization is not done exploring either the Core (in [[literature/Heir To The Jedi]] they go to an unexplored moon in the Core) or the various Rims. They may be thousands or millions of uninhabited planets full of valuable minerals all over the galaxy.
  • See, I have to take issue with that. Yes galaxies are stupidly huge, but 1) They have the tech in the Star Wars universe to travel to all points of it anywhere from a few days to a few months depending on the engine and 2) They have had this tech for thousands of years. Compare and contrast to Star Trek where warp drive is only 300 years old and is very slow in relative terms, taking 75 years to cross from one side to the other assuming ideal conditions. The only reason why there would be vast chunks of unexplored space at this point is plot convenience.
  • Getting to the planets may be relatively easy, but developing and building the infrastructure on them would still require a huge investment. Also, In many first world nations on earth, the population is either stabilizing or even decreasing. Seeing as the average Star Wars citizen has even more advanced technology (even on backwaters like Tatooine) the galactic population may not be expanding all that much (if at all), further decreasing the drive for colonization.
  • War profiteers and whatever the empire had as an aristocracy likely the first to jump in the First Order train. There is no space Argentina to run to because the galaxy is on the small size so they have to stand together and try to hold their own.
• On Canto, Rose explains to Finn that The First Order basically seized and strip-mined her home world of all valuable resources to fund the purchase of their weapons, and it's implied that they bought those weapons from the people gambling at Canto when she says "only one business makes you this wealthy". The First Order makes money just like every other business in the galaxy, but they get to skip the start-up costs by using lethal force or extortion.

Where are the First Order civilians?

• According to the tooth-to-tail ratio, you need many times more productive civilians than soldiers to sustain your army. Even modern armies like the U.S.A. need about ten people in logistics for every one solider on the field. This is especially egregious in light of Rose's account where the F.O. used a civilian workforce as target practice the moment their weapons are made. Where is the infrastructure and the population centers the First Order would need to keep their bloated war-machine supplied and maintained?
  • Why use civilians when you have robots? A slave force that doesn't eat, drink, sleep, breathe, or get distracted by love. You could build a thousand factories on the surface of a far-flung, uninhabitable asteroid and be good to go. As for normal population centres, they are everywhere. We just don't see them as they are completely irrelevant to the plot.

When did the First Order get so big/Republic get so small?

• In the last film, as far as I can recall, the First Order was basically just remnants of Empire wannabes. The Republic didn't bother dealing with them because, well, they weren't a big concern, and only sent Leia and a little bit of support (the Resistance). Then, ONE system out of an entire GALACTIC REPUBLIC gets wiped out, and suddenly there's only like 50 ships left in the entire galaxy to fight the Order? Who simultaneously has taken over basically the whole galaxy even after their biggest and most expensive asset was blown up a few days ago?
  • The Last Jedi happened at most few days after the destruction of the Hosnian System and the Starkiller Base. It's very possible that the remaining military of the Republic is in disarray since they basically just lost their leaders.
  • Furthermore, with how many the people in the Centrist party that secretly supported the First Order, there's also possibility of some of the remaining military of the Republic to defect to the First Order.
  • Then the fact that with only having few days, it's also possible that many worlds don't know that Starkiller Base has been destroyed and just chose to surrender rather than being destroyed.
  • Its my understanding that the New Republic never got very big compared to what it was before. Many planets refused to join it and simply governed themselves, so basically when the Hosnian System got wiped out so did the Republic.
  • It's nice you have that understanding, but NONE of that information has been in the movies. The original trilogy (hell, not even the crap prequels) required us to find supplemental material (where exactly is it, anyway?) to figure out what all is going on. The matter of the near complete lack of any Republic capital ships has been bugging me since The Force Awakens. Even the ragtag Rebellion had multiple capital ships. And what the hell is with Leia's group being called "The Resistance" when they won? It seems to me the new team just desperately wanted to write "Rebellion vs. Empire" stories like the OT and just decided to skip the parts that could lead to that plausibly happening.
  • The original movies didn't need supplementary material? Holy crap is that not the case. What exactly the Empire and Republic even were was NEVER made clear, nor what the clone wars, Darth Vader, the Emperor, or even the Jedi actually were beyond the most sparse of details. It's one of the reasons why Star Wars HAS so much supplementary material in the first place. And as for the prequels, if anything the number of plot holes and unexplained details supported even more.
  • It was more so that they didn't "need" supplementary material in the sense that you can watch, say, the original trilogy without having read any supplementary material whatsoever and still perfectly understand what is happening. Sure, there's lots of Noodle Incidents and assumed backstory, and the supplementary material fleshes that out, but you can watch and understand the movies perfectly well without any of it. You can watch the original trilogy perfectly well without, say, knowing who the Emperor was before he became the Emperor. As evidenced by the millions of people who have watched, understood and enjoyed the Star Wars movies while simultaneously not giving a single shit about any of the supplementary stuff or even the prequels.
  • Remember this was a plot point in the prequels as well: the Republic couldn't stop the Separatists because it had no actual army (until the cover was pulled back on the Clones anyway). Now, the New Republic DID have a military but it was so damn tiny (because of their fear of appearing to be a rebranded Empire) it was wiped out by Starkiller Base because nobody expected ANOTHER Death Star. Local planetary/system defence forces can still fight, but they're not organised to do anything more than that and now the Republic's leadership is gone, there's nobody left who can rally them into a coherent fighting force in the literal days between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
  • Ok I think you underestimate how one star system just gone install the fear of god in everyone else wearing the colors of the Republic. This is not blowing up the White House, this is destroying whole state in one move from the moon. What really guarantees they don't have another strike like this in store? What makes you think you can win after this? No wars by our standards even really match just what happened, nuclear bombs are less destructive than that.

God in Star Wars?

• There's a couple of times in the movie where members of the Resistance said 'Godspeed', one being the doomed Medical Frigate captain and another being Holdo herself. So do characters in Star Wars, at least those who are human, have somewhat familiar religion to our real world? I mean, there are characters using 'hell' in those movies as well after all. Han Solo did it in the OT, and Poe said it here as well.
  • I choose to believe that "God" is simply the highest setting on their speedometers. But seriously, the religious references have never been adequately explained.
  • Several cultures have had various gods in the old EU (typically revealed to either be the Force under a different name, a powerful Force-user, or occasionally left unexplained). Most of Star Wars has been secular in an Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions way except for the Force (which is of course a very solid and provable religion), but just because most people are non-religious doesn't mean everyone is.
  • Even if we just look at the films, both Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace made references to the concept of gods and religions. The Ewoks worshiped C-3P0 as a god and he was quick to tell the others that pretending to be a deity was against protocol. Meanwhile, Jar Jar Binks often exclaimed "ye gods" and "by the gods", which implies the Gungans have at least one pantheistic religion.
  • Godspeed is just a figure of speech. It's a fancy way of saying "good luck". An atheist can tell someone "godspeed" and be 100% sincere even though he/she does not literally believe in a god. It's the equivalent of a person saying "Go to Hell" even if they believe there is no Hell to go to.
  • However, there must be a "God" and "Hell", conceptually speaking, for those phrases to exist. Even if they are not believed in by the speaker. Therefore, there is likely an idea of "God" or gods in the SW universe, though that does not necessarily mean a widespread belief or religion.
  • Going by the history of our own world, cultures that have had some form of god in their history, be that a person, spirit, sacred animal, or object, outweigh the ones that don't by 95% easily. Atheism being a serious, widespread alternative to theism has only really been true since the 20th century. And if you ever study anthropology, you'll find this to be true even in completely isolated societies largely cut off from the wider population. The reasons for this are varied and fraught with controversy, but suffice to say that for this not to be mirrored on at least one major planet in the Star Wars universe given just how similar these humans are to us in every other way is unlikely.
  • As for "Go to Hell", belief in an unpleasant afterlife is a fairly plausible outgrowth of the universal human (and presumably alien) belief that dying, y'know, kinda sucks. Many Real Life cultures have independently arrived at the concept of an afterlife that's either retributive or just drab, because an actual state of oblivion is very hard to conceptualize, and a benign afterlife that's not a reward for the best of us runs counter to our fundamental distaste for death.
  • Bearing in mind that the whole Star Wars franchise seems to have a vaguely Eastern worldview to it (just with more laser swords and other flashy effects), one can indeed expect that all of these concepts are widespread, albeit in a rather different way from the Western versions of those concepts familiar to those of us in the Americas and Europe. The Gungans (Jar Jar Binks' people) seem to be a bit like the Hindus with their polytheism, while the Force and the Jedi and Sith all seem to be following certain Buddhist concepts in which the self is a mere illusion and spirits are merely temporarily partitioned manifestations of a greater universal consciousness. That people believe there are gods, but tend to focus more on heroes' stories in their personal mythologies (as with the stable children on Canto Bight at the end of this movie) is a distinctly Jainist line of thought.
    
    For God and gods, one can easily see how a few Force-ghosts and the Force itself could be taken for deities; for Heaven, one may note the Jedi afterlife is something like a Buddhist's idea of Nirvana. As for Hell, the Sith afterlife is probably something like that, though we haven't (so far) seen any of them manifest as Force-ghosts to tell us about it. Note that in the cyclical thinking of Eastern religion and philosophy, Hell is more a purgatory than a perpetual punishment: the Hindus believe in a number of tortures one endures in various Hells in order to purge bad karma before being reincarnated, while certain strains of Buddhism teach that the life-and-death cycle of reincarnation itself is the Hell to which we are condemned for our evils and from which we are to seek escape through enlightenment. In view of these beliefs, it's likely that the Sith are perpetually doomed to keep being sent back to this world in some form or other to suffer until they purge their Dark Side tendencies (i.e. mend their evil ways), while the Jedi are free from the cares of this world and content to stay at one with the Force and only occasionally appear as ghosts to their descendants and successors to help guide them to attaining the same enlightenment and escape. That's why we don't see a lot of Anakin or Obi-wan or Yoda anymore, and Luke will probably only continue to appear to Rey and Kylo Ren a few more times before going off to join his mentors (and his sister Leia) in the blissful enlightenment of being at one with the Force.
• To hack this entry with Ockham's razor (to tiny little bits) - Translation Convention. "Godspeed" is just a customary wish of good luck and probably used here to convey whatever the people of the galaxy far, far away say to each other when going on a quest. Not very consistent, as translations go, but there you have it.

Rey translating for Chewbacca

• Why did Rey tell Luke what Chewbacca was saying? She barely knows Chewie and might never have even seen a Wookiee before, yet suddenly she knows what he says? Why does Luke NOT know what Chewie is saying when they have known each other for decades!?
  • Rey being able to understand BB8 was hand waved as her being able to understand a wide variety of languages due to her upbringing on Jakku putting her in contact with many different alien races. Presumably, she also picked up Wookiee somewhere along the way. Now, whether that's a sufficient explanation or not is debatable, but ultimately, it's just because Rey being able to understand Chewie is more convenient for the story than Luke being able to understand Chewie. Luke's story is basically over at this point, while Rey presumably has many adventures to come, so she needs to be able to talk to Chewie, especially if he's going to be her copilot.
  • Rey showed an ability to understand the Wookiee language in Force Awakens. As for her translating for Luke, she just might not know whether or not Luke can understand him, and is just being nice.
  • Rey could have easily asked Chewbacca all about what he knows about Luke on the way to find him, and therefore would know that Luke can't understand Shriwook.

Language barriers

• So Rey tells Chewie to deliver a message to Finn if he sees him before she does. But The Force Awakens established that Finn can't understand Chewie. Finn was knocked out at the end of that movie, and when he woke up in this one, Chewie was another planet away. There's no possible way he could have picked up Shyriiwook in that time frame. How were they supposed to communicate?
  • Chewie clearly understands Basic, even if he can't pronounce it. Maybe he could just write it down?
  • That's what protocol droids are for. Threepio understands Chewbacca just fine. Watch the scene in ANH where Han is saying goodbye to Luke on Yavin 4 - Threepio and Chewie are having a conversation in the background, although heaven knows what about!

Page-Turners

• Paper generally doesn't exist in Star Wars. I can accept that the Jedi texts were an exception and perhaps Yoda had even been around books at one point in his long life, but it baffles me that Yoda would use the expression "page-turners." There shouldn't be an idiom like that, and even if there is, Yoda shouldn't expect Luke to casually know it.
  • Luke had been on the island for years and knew about the books. So he would have at least had some understanding that such things were used in ancient times before the Jedi had computerized archives. As idioms go, "page-turner" is not hard to recognize the context of when speaking of a physical object that one must turn the pages in order to read. Especially since it is implied that Luke himself did not manage to get through all the books. Although another interesting question would be if such old documents would be written in a language that most modern people could read. Godspeed!
• Even in the Information Age in Real Life, hardcopy is still quite popular, and has some widely recognized advantages over digital storage. So it's entirely plausible that paper and books exist in a Galaxy Far Far Away, even if it's not very widely used. That's aside from the fact that idiomatic usage incorporates references to things no longer in common usage, such as modern military forces making references to "the tip of the spear" despite spears obviously having long since fallen out of favor with most militaries. That said, even a modern person probably has a good idea of how scrolls or clay tablets work (ironically, a clay tablet might be more familiar to a modern user than a scroll would, given the popularity of tablet computers and smartphones).
• Translation convention? Yoda called them "data sliders" in Basic.
• You don't need paper to have books with pages. Fabric or parchment are perfectly good for that purpose in a pinch.
  • It's also not exactly a hard concept to figure out that you have an object with a material covered in text, and if you wish to continue reading said text, you have the turn the material from one side to the next.

Poe and Maz

• How does Poe know Maz? When he talks with her, he sounds as though he's familiar with her and he was the one who thought of having her break the codes. He wasn't with Finn, Rey, and Han went they met her on Takodana. Not to mention at the time Finn thought Poe was dead and didn't meet back up with him until they were on D'Qar.
  • In the Poe Dameron comic books, Poe is pretty much Leia's go-to errand boy for just about everything from recovering sensitive information to finding more fuel for their ships. Maz is an extremely well-connected smuggler who is sympathetic to the Resistance and seems to know Han and Leia personally. Maybe Leia had introduced Poe to Maz as a potential supplier of resources for the Resistance?

Maz can break First Order codes??

• Finn, Poe and Rose decide to break into Snoke's ship so they can disable the tracker. But they can't get onboard unless they crack some imperial codes. They immediately decide to call Maz. Wait, what? Was Maz ever established as a master codebreaker? Was there a scene in TFA that I'm forgetting? And dang, if they know someone who can sneak onboard a star destroyer, why have they never previously asked her to share this information? This is important stuff, man! Once you know how to sneak onboard enemy ships, you can seen in commando teams with bombs or whatever. And yeah, when they call her she happens to be busy, but if they'd just called previously she probably would have had more free time! Or they could've recruited that other "Master Codebreaker" guy earlier, or whatever. Why didn't they?
  • They probably figured that anyone who could do that would be too expensive for them. They were never rolling in cash and have never been that desperate before.
  • Maz doesn't need to be a master codebreaker. Finn already knows, from personal experience, that Maz is somebody who Knows a Guy Who Knows a Guy, and it's not like they have a ton of other people they can call to ask for information about somebody who's going to be a criminal. And, as it happens, Maz really does know a guy who can help them.
  • Yeah, but they didn't contact Maz in hopes that she would point them to some other guy. They contacted Maz in hopes that she could crack the codes personally. This is confirmed by Maz's first words in the movie: "Could I do it? Yes of course I could. But could I do it right now? No. I'm rather busy." She goes on to explain about the "union dispute", and recommends someone else simply because she's too busy. So the writers are going with the premise that Maz is a master codebreaker, even though this has never been previously established. It feels like they were just looking for an excuse to include Maz.
  • Poe knows about Maz's skills. Rose and Finn don't.
  • To be fair, the only reason we never learn that Maz is a master codebreaker in The Force Awakens because it never comes up, because no one needs any codes broken in that movie.

Kylo's helmet

• How did Kylo Ren have his helmet at the beginning of the movie? In The Force Awakens, he took it off before killing Han and left it behind on the bridge when he went to follow Rey and Finn, so it should have destroyed when Starkiller Base blew up.
  • Maybe Kylo made another one just like the former.
• Another thing; That helmet was not just a thing Kylo wore to emulate Darth Vader. It was part of the Knights of Ren uniform. It seems Snoke, Star Wars fans and even the writers forget this. That helmet would be valid even if it wasn't a "Vader Fanboy" thingy.
  • Where is it established that the all the Knights of Ren wear that helmet? So far we haven't seen any of them besides Kylo.
  • Assuming that they are the other Jedi apprentices that helped Kylo destroy Luke's academy, then we have already seen them in flashback.
  • ...Luke, Kylo, and Artoo were literally the only ones we saw in that flashback. If you're talking about Rey's vision in Force Awakens, then they are wearing helmets, but they're different from Kylo's. It's very unlikely they're part of a uniform, in that case. As for why Kylo has a new helmet here, if he's so dead-set on hiding his face and identity, it makes sense he'd have multiple copies or could quickly get another.
  • The "uniforms" of a loose group of people do not need to be identical. Notice that Kylo himself idolizes Darth Vader but opted for a different helmet design than his grandfather's. Kylo may have felt that Rule of Cool required helmets, but didn't want the Knights of Ren to be like identical stormtroopers.
  • Worth noting that (a) we know almost nothing about the Knights of Ren, who they are, what they want and how they were formed, and (b) they're (possibly) named after Kylo Ren. Assuming that Kylo named them and designed their uniform, then it is hardly mutually exclusive that (a) the helmet is part of the uniform and (b) Kylo designed it out of his fanboyism towards Vader, with some added "this looks cool" flourishes.

When did "no name" become "know name"?

• Rey should have no idea that the man in black with the crossguard lightsaber is called Kylo Ren. She knows he is Ben Solo, but I can't recall anybody speaking his Dark Side name in her presence before she says it herself, so how does she initiate a plea to Luke while mentioning his name? Did she learn in in some offscreen downtime, or through the Force? If I'm remembering correctly and she never hears the name on screen, it's a minor plot hole. Or do Force users always know the other person's name, and Luke only asked Rey because he cut himself off?
  • Kylo Ren is a pretty big player in the First Order. It's hardly unlikely that she's heard his name spoken in some context and, through various interactions with other characters, managed to put two and two together.
  • It's possible someone in the Resistance told her his name.

Force-sensitive kid in the end

• Why is it treated as a big deal that some kid has latent force powers? I think it was established that force users do emerge all around the galaxy, and always have, wasn't it? Moreover, why is it shown as a hopeful moment, if the Empire is in full control again, so Kylo is far more likely to get to this kid, and other potential Force users, first, to kill or convert as he sees fit?
  • It's a big deal because he's clearly being inspired by Luke. He's far more likely to go to the Rebellion than to let himself be grabbed by the First Order. And just because they're "in charge" does not mean they have anything like the infrastructure that the old Jedi Council had to find force-sensitives.
  • Because that kid is also probably not the only one. If some lowly stablehand can use the Force, then anyone can.
  • Why? Nobody made such assumption back when a lowly scrapshop assistant was found to be sensitive. Not the only one - I agree, but so what? As for the sensitive-finding infrastructure, since Palpatine apparently had a goal of exterminating all the Jedi, I think he would need one in place, .
  • The First Order is not the Empire. Palpatine's resources are not the First Order's resources, as Palpatine's infrastructure was based in Coruscant, while the First Order was out on the edge of Republic territory up to now. The First Order doesn't have the kind of control over the galaxy that Palpatine does. That's why Leia's resistance was fighting them in TFA instead of the Republic — the First Order was seen as some meager imperial remnant.

Force Bond

• Snoke was the one responsible for setting up the force bond between Rey and Kylo Ren, so when he died, how is the two still have that bond by the end of the movie? Is it a permanent thing? Or it's just a side effect of the growing affection between Rey and Ben?
  • It's possible Snoke was lying about creating the bond and they accidentally did it themselves in The Force Awakens. Claiming he did could very well be an attempt to demoralize them, since he directly mocks Rey for thinking Kylo would stand with her because of the bond. Not to mention, I'm not sure when he could have forged the link since this film was the first time he came into Rey's presence.
  • Snoke's claim seemed to be more that he manipulated/magnified the bond and made them see what he wanted them to see (i.e. the visions of them turning each other to light/dark), and Rey and Kylo having already been in each other's minds is probably what enabled him to do so.
  • What you're thinking of is No Ontological Inertia - it would seem that it's averted here.
  • I assumed that he simply did some Force-nudging to plant the seeds, and then the bond grew naturally between two such powerful Force-sensitives. Maybe he monitored it and helped it along, but it's not a spell — it's a connection due to a natural force, just like how Luke and Leia, Leia and Kylo, etc. can contact each other. I don't see any reason why it would end with Snoke's death, although considering Rey's opinion of Kylo at the moment, if he tries to contact her again through the bond (and probably will), she might find a way to shut him out, like Luke purposely cutting himself off from the Force.

Couldn't Kylo Ren just use his Force Bond with Rey to figure out her location?

• So a major twist in the film is that Snoke was deliberately creating a Force Bond between Kylo Ren and Rey in hopes of manipulating Rey to try to bring Ben back to the light and come to save him, at which time Ben would bring Rey to Snoke so he could mind-probe her for Luke's location. Okay, that makes sense, but couldn't Kylo Ren just figure out Rey's location from their shared visions instead? It seems like they both can see each other through their visions. If so, then Kylo could've easily figure out where Rey is, and therefore, Luke's location, because it's the only logical location where Rey would be.
  • It might be easy to miss but early in the visions Kylo Ren states he can't actually see any of Rey's surroundings, he's only able to see her and thus he can't figure out where she is.
  • Not to mention Ahch-To isn't particular distinctive looking, and is extremely remote.
  • Even if it was it would not give him the coordinates of the planet on the galactic map.
  • Darth Vader could have done that. Between ANH and TESB, he tracked Luke across the galaxies just by using the Force (and without the advantage of this kind of link). But, alas, Kylo Ren is not Vader.
  • No, that's not what happened; the Empire had sent out thousands of probes to hunt the Rebellion, and one just happened to find them on Hoth. When it was destroyed, Vader came to investigate, and then he sensed Luke. The entire reason he captures Luke's friends on Cloud City is because he doesn't know where to find him and is using them as bait.
  • There's a whole shedload of extended universe material explaining the steps Vader went to in order to find Luke and confirm he was his son. It's likely not canon anymore, but the original intent is there.
  • ...No, it's just plain not canon. That's the whole point of Legends, it's not canon anymore, and the films still show that Vader couldn't track Luke through the Force.
  • The very first film established that Vader couldn't even use the Force to find the Death Star plans, which spent the film variously being in close proximity to his daughter, his old Jedi Master, his former personal astrometch droid, the protocol droid that he personally built, and his son. Not to mention being in close proximity to him for an extended portion of the plot when all of the aforementioned characters were on the Death Star. Clearly Vader's abilities of divination have limits.

Snoke's GPS

• Ok, so Snoke reveals that he's been facilitating/boosting Rey and Kylo Ren's mental connections throughout the film. I have just a couple of questions about this:
  • 1) How did Snoke find Rey to make or use the connection? Could he just sense her Force signature out in the galaxy, now that her powers are awakened? This at least seems possible, since Rey is still a neophyte and has no experience shielding herself from detection, and Force users have many times been shown detecting when other Force users are nearby (though Snoke's ability to do this exceeds prior users by orders of magnitude). However, this leads me to my next question:
  • 2) If he is powerful enough to detect and manipulate Rey into having visions *from across the galaxy*, or at the very least pick up on Rey and Ren's already-extant connection, why doesn't Snoke use that connection to track her to Skywalker's planet? We know that Snoke badly wants to know where Luke Skywalker is, so he can finish him and the last of the Jedi off. If Snoke can accomplish the non-trivial task of finding one person in the galaxy and fiddle with their Force bond, pinpointing or at least narrowing where she is from there would seemingly be child's play.
    • Just because you know someone's email address doesn't mean that you know anything about their location. Likewise, just because Snoke can set up a Force Bond with Rey doesn't mean that he knows anything about Rey's location. Apparently this particular force power just doesn't work that way.
  • Force Bonds are well established in the Legends canon, and seem to work exactly as described here as well. He could have set up the force bond as soon as Kylo told Snoke about Rey, or when he got back after being chopped up. They likely already had some sort of connection that he just had to amplify, Rey and Kylo had after all already had a mental duel through the force. As for using it to track down Skywalker... well, that would involve Kylo knowing about the force bond, which would spoil Snoke's big plan. Being an Orcus on His Throne type, he was likely hoping Skywalker would come to him, with enough encouragement.
    • Sure, but his throne moves: he could take his enormous flagship to Skywalker's planet any time he felt like it and blast him. While I guess you could say that Snoke was just being cagey about Skywalker setting a possible trap, that seems a lot more in character for him in the last movie (where he stayed firmly in the shadows) versus this one (where he arrogantly flaunts his power, both personally and militarily).
    • It's not that simple to locate someone's exact location through a Force Bond, especially when the person doing the locating is Kylo Ren (who's powerful, but no master). Plus it would almost certainly tip off both her and Luke, and then they could simply leave before Snoke even got there. Far better to fool Rey into thinking Kylo could be redeemed, and then hopefully get both Luke and Rey to come to in this misguided assumption that they were in control and had the advantage. And frankly, this is why Snoke is so smug and arrogant in this movie, as far as he's concerned things are going pretty damn well for him (despite the incompetence of his minions).
    • Also, he's a Star Wars bad guy; as if he's going to want to pass up the opportunity to defeat the Last Jedi in person rather than just blowing him up from orbit.

Finn's recovery

• Notice Luke Skywalker still has his prosthetic limb? Why wouldn't he? It's only been forty years right? Medical science clearly isn't that advanced compared to the overall technology level of the galaxy, an overall technology level that hasn't changed much. Now as complex as a hand is, it's not as important to functionality as the spine. Theoretically, a light saber cut hand can be reattached if it doesn't fall down chasm but a light saber rent spine should be done, no questions asked. That's what we see with Finn. By rights, he should be dead when combined with exposure. It would be a sad but fitting end to the storm trooper taken by his family who refused to bend to his captors and used his last breath swinging at the figure head of them he helped bring low, even managing to land grazing blow before going down. Even with his unlikely survival, with most of his spine fried Finn should be paralyzed. This is a bitter but fitting continuation of his story, a mook faced The Dragon and the dragon wrecked him for life. At the risk of repeating Saw Guerrera, this would also allow Finn to get cybernetic implants in his skeletal and nervous systems, which would allow him to avenge himself or something. Even if he stays paralyzed, he could still have some Hidden Depths that allow him to contribute to the plot. But instead we see Finn running around just fine, severely reducing the impact of his defeat at Kyle O'Ren's hand. Killing, even permanently maiming a sympathetic character audiences have become invested gives a villain credibility. Yeah, Kyle killed his father too, but Han didn't fight back. While Finn isn't a great warrior, he would have been something for Kyle. But narrative criticism aside, how exactly is Finn still walking? He shouldn't need to be rebuilt to the extent Grievous or Vader were, but some kind of artificial reconstruction would be necessary according to what we have seen.
  • Simple: Kylo didn't cut his spine. He gave him a shallow cut across his back that didn't sever his spine. Same as Rey gives Kylo a shallow cut across the face that doesn't lop off half of Kylo's head.

Is Luke really the Last Jedi?

• If Return of the Jedi taught us anything it's that there was going to be the possibility of Leia becoming another Jedi in the wake that Luke either dies or falls to the Dark Side himself. Yoda quite literally says this when he announced "There is another." This connects to another headscratcher but it also resonates as its own point. Why does nobody seem to think that Leia is a fully dangerous threat to the First Order? Okay, the First Order knows she's dangerous as a political leader. But why not also as a Force sensitive rival. How come Kylo Ren never even considers this idea, or Snoke or Palpatine for that matter. This is just never addressed beyond Luke saying he will not be the Last Jedi. Even then, the film seems to exclusively highlight Rey but not the daughter of Anakin Skywalker. There isn't any real justification for why Leia never became a sort of Jedi sage herself, even a little bit. It almost seems like you would be forgiven for thinking she never had any powers at all considering how inconsequential it is beyond the Deus Ex Machinas the series is known for.

Is no one else fighting back?

• Yes, the majority of the Republic's government and fleet was destroyed. But the Republic at least has to include a couple hundred worlds-including heavily populated ones like Coruscant. Not to mention numerous planets or systems independent of the Republic who would at least some form of planetary defense. And yet, we're given no indication that anyone other than the Resistance is fighting back.
  • 1. We don't know that the worlds that have the resources to fight back are being directly threatened/antagonized enough they're willing to put their necks on the line after such massive New Republic losses. 2. Coruscant, Kuat, and any worlds with sizable military seem like they'd be First Order/Imperial leaning.

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