Could Snoke Make A Surprise Return In Star Wars: Episode IX?

Let’s face it, things don’t exactly go to plan for Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Rather than kick off a new era of darkness with his Vader-a-like boy toy Kylo Ren at his side, he winds up unceremoniously chopped in half by his apprentice and ends up lying on the floor with his tongue lolling ungracefully out of his (very) dead mouth.

But perhaps Snoke is a big fan of Chumbawumba’s 1997 hit “Tubthumping,” which contains the lyric: “I get knocked down, but I get up again / You are never gonna keep me down!” This is the working theory of some Star Wars fans, who believe that Snoke will actually get up again. In order to arrive at this conclusion, they’ve seized upon an entry in Pablo Hidalgo’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi – The Visual Dictionary, which gives us a bunch of info about the big bad. Most interestingly, it confirms that Snoke isn’t a Sith Lord as they died with Vader and the Emperor. Rather, he’s some new form of darkness.

Take a look below and see for yourself:

I’ve got to admit, I’m really squinting at this to try and work out how people are reading into it as a hint that Snoke could return. For my money, the only option available left for him to re-appear is in the supplemental comics and books. Then again, Darth Maul was famously bisected at the end of The Phantom Menace, only to turn up as a miserable half-robot spider thing in Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Even so, I think fans are just going to have to face up to the fact that Snoke was only ever the catalyst for Kylo Ren becoming Supreme Leader of the First Order. In all likelihood, his story is done and dusted in Star Wars: The Last Jedi and if we do ever see him again, it’ll be in stories set before The Force Awakens telling the tale of how and why he founded the First Order and how he mastered the Force.