Supreme Leader Snoke, We Hardly Knew Ye!

I wanna say some nice things about a very despised character. As we’re all aware, I’m sure (please do not read this if you are not aware), Supreme Leader Snoke, the shadowy, oft-holographic big bad of Star Wars–The Force Awakens is dead. Chopped in half Darth Maul style by his protege/victim Kylo Ren. A lot of people hated snoke, and thought his whole deal, the menacing voice, holographic projections, vague identity, was corny as fuck. Presumably some people were really interested in Snoke, and wanted to know who he was or whatever, but I certainly don’t know any of these people.

But nearly everyone seems to think killing off the presumptive big bad of the series in the second installment of the trilogy is a good idea. I agree! But where i disagree is that Snoke getting killed off was necessary because Snoke sucks, or because we don’t know who he is. Rian Johnson actually does a lot over the course of The Last Jedi to rehabilitate Snoke, at least to me, starting by doing away with the whole “giant projection” gimmick that proves he’s an actual guy who hangs out in a bitchin’ throne room. But I also think Johnson left subtle hints, bread crumbs on a trail to determine who the Supreme Leader really is. This may be baseless speculation, but I think I’ve pieced enough together to figure out Snoke’s true identity. Are you with me? Okay, here it is: Snoke is the Galaxy’s biggest asshole.

Seriously, he’s just the worst guy in the fucking universe, a dick of truly epic proportions, and I love him. What I think makes him interesting is not that he’s evil. Palpatine was evil; it’s been done. He’s a personal kind of asshole, a bully. He has the perfect way of digging at Kylo Ren, first with the wonderful “take off that mask” bit (side note: that phenomena, where you adopt an affectation you think is cool, but then someone makes the slightest offhand crack about it and you become so self-conscious you decide you hate it and never do it again, is so common and true to life I’m shocked that I’ve literally never seen it in a movie before) but then also when Ren brings in Rey, saying that he was “too weak to understand my manipulations” or something bitchy like that. I’m reminded of the classic RedLetterMedia description of prequels-Palpatine: “I guess I really like Palpatine so much because he’s the only character with any kind of passion to him: he’s fucking evil and he loves it.”

But to dig just one layer deeper, I really do think that Johnson does a great job of allowing us to construct a backstory for Snoke: because in a really clever way Snoke’s backstory is what the whole movie is about! Remember the little kid from Canto Bight who uses the force to move that broom? Okay, Snoke is that kid. Not literally (duh), but I think Johnson, throughout the film, wants us to think about the force as something that exists apart from the Jedi (and especially apart from the Skywalkers). What’s important about the kid at the end isn’t that he’s going to be a Jedi master or something, but that eventually the force is a part of him, and will be something he understands and uses in a way that’s completely wild and untaught. On this, Kylo and Luke make the same point: the force doesn’t belong to the Jedi or the Sith: let something new happen.

Snoke is an incredibly powerful force user, and probably grew up in a rough environment somewhere in the outer rim (where the First Order started). I imagine he was kind of scrawny weak, but he realized he could manipulate other kids, or hurt them when they threatened him. He lusted for power, at some point got his face all fucked up, and in the power vacuum after the fall of the Empire, used the skills he’d developed all his life to become the Snoke we all know and love. Where the kid in Canto seems like a good and pure little moppet, Snoke was always a little touched, and eventually, without guidance or instruction, things spiralled. If this sounds familiar, it’s also because it’s the story of Kylo and Rey! Wheels within wheels! Clever!