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.
It’s a somewhat anticlimactic end for the former Supreme Leader, and even after The Last Jedi‘s release, that million-dollar question of who exactly is Snoke remains, as Rian Johnson refrained from divulging any firm details about his backstory before he was killed off during the film’s mesmerizing Throne Room scene. That’s something which left many fans unhappy, of course, and even now, over a month since the pic first hit theaters, Johnson still finds himself defending the decision.
Speaking to /Film in a recent interview, which has yielded a ton of interesting tidbits, the writer/director was asked if he had any regrets on how he handled Snoke’s fate – given the backlash – and here’s what he said:
“A lot of things that ended up taking hold in the fan community in terms of who is Snoke, who are Rey’s parents, and the fever pitch that those rose to, I obviously knew those were questions you had coming out of Force Awakens, but I didn’t have the weight of the fan expectation of what the payoff of those questions would be.
Which I think was a good thing. […] I guess what I’m trying to say is, the timing of it was, it’s not like I was aware of those expectations and was purposefully trying to poke people in the eye, I was writing to my honest gut reactions to what the most powerful turn of events would be to those questions.”
While we think that just a little more backstory on Snoke would have gone a long way to pleasing fans, people are just going to have to face up to the fact that the villain 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.
Besides, this new trilogy is all about phasing out the old characters (see: Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia) in favor of the new generation, and Snoke’s death allows Episode IX to now place a laser focus on its primary duo, Rey and Kylo Ren, who are arguably more interesting figures, anyways.
But that’s just our opinion. What do you think? Should Johnson have given Snoke a different fate in Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Sound off in the usual place with your thoughts.
