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Supreme Leader Snoke was seemingly kill offunceremoniously in the sexual climax ofStar Wars : The Last Jedi , leave alone a major secret about who he really was and what his motives were , but withPalpatine confirmed to be backinStar Wars : The Rise of Skywalker , could the two eccentric have more in coarse than buff assumed ?
SomeStar Warsfans were upset when Kylo Ren killed Supreme Leader Snoke before they could get moreanswers about who he was or where he come from , but now that Palpatine is back , we can blank out everything we thought we knew about the sequel trilogy . There ’s clearly more at play here than was seeming with Snoke , and the answer could be even more of a twist than fans expected .
We do n’t know much about his character inStar Wars : The Rise of Skywalkeryet , but his ominous chatter at the end of the first annoyer trailer opens up a earthly concern of new possibleness .
Palpatine’s Survival Changes Everything We Know About the Sequels
InStar war : TheForce Awakens , The First Order is presented as an establishment that grew out of the ashes of the kill Empire after it retreated into the Unknown Regions , andtheir payoff to the galaxy to destroy the New Republic was a mystery .
Now that Palpatine is back , there ’s a complete shift of linguistic context . Thanks to Chuck Wendig’sAftermathbook trilogy , which took space concisely afterStar Wars : Returnof the Jediwe know Palpatine was seeking a dismal world power in the Unknown Regions and was seeking to find a way to navigate to it . The road was foresightful and treacherous , so it claim tenner of research and calculations , but he lastly found a fashion , laying out a programme for the Empire to back away there in the consequence of his death .
Known as the " Contingency , " Palpatine ’s plan was full of retaliation , mystical ceremony , and character assassination plots all mean todestroy the New Republic and what was left of the Empire , with only some hand - pick truehearted followers take to pull away into the Unknown Regions to produce a newfangled Empire . One of his follower , a Sith cultist name Yupe Tashu , was convinced Palpatine was n’t really dead and they ’d find him in the obscure part :
" Palpatine live on . We will find him again out there in the dark . Everything has arranged itself as our Master foretold . All things move toward the marvellous design . The sacrifices have all been made . "
If this is the example and this was all just part of Palpatine ’s design , that mean the First Order itself and likely its commission inStar Wars : The Force AwakensandStar Wars : The Last Jediwas also accord to his will , whether directly or indirectly . But how does Snoke outfit into all of this ? Did Palpatine merely allow someone else to lead his reborn Empire , were they working together ? Or is there more to their relationship ?
Palpatine Survived, But His Body Was Destroyed
Palpatine may have subsist beyond his fall into the chasm inStar Wars : homecoming of the Jedi , but it seems likely his body was destruct , mean his knowingness would be in search of a new host . This is an idea that was already heavily explored in the now non - canon Expanded Universe , AKA " legend , " narration . A popular concept created by the comicDark EmpiresawPalpatine survive by transferring his consciousnessinto the dead body of a knockoff , and something similar to that seems like the most logical route for the subsequence trilogy to follow .
Gallius Rax , the world Palpatine brought up since he was a child with the solitary purpose of executing his contingence for him , did n’t believe in the same mysterious aspects of Palpatine as Yupe Tashu did , but he still used Tashu ’s opinion to keep the cultist in line , indicating they planned to go to the Unknown Regions to"find Palpatine and revivify him , bestow his soul back to physique anew,“suggesting Palpatine would be shapeless and need young flesh .
Whether this new figure is custom - grown as a clone , an unwilling sacrifice from someone Palpatine chooses to possess , or something else entirely remains to be seen , but one possibility that clears up a surprising number of dangling questions is that Palpatine take to inhabit Snoke ’s body .
varlet 2 of 2 : Palpatine - as - Snoke Answers Every Big Snoke Mystery
Palpatine-as-Snoke Answers Every Big Snoke Mystery
Snoke ’s minimum backstoryseems to have some significant connection to the events depicted in the relaxation of the Skywalker saga , yet he ’s not a character we ’d ever interpret or heard of before . Even the books , comics , and animation , which take a much deeper nose dive into areas not explore in the pic , do n’t bring out who Snoke is or introduce any novel character that could turn out to be Snoke .
Not only does Snoke have a association to retiring events , but he also appear to hold a sort of score against the Skywalkers and the New Republic . He knows that if Luke Skywalker returns , he will create a new generation of Jedi , and he chooses Ben Solo , the Skywalker heritor , to lead his force , cloud him andturning him to the colored side .
The only someone who flawlessly check this bill is Palpatine . He has a clear-cut bone to pick with the Skywalkers and the New Republic , which grew out of the Rebel Alliance , and isalready adept at release Skywalkers to the dark side . TheAftermathtrilogy also draw Leia feeling her sister under some kind of plan of attack from the dark side , and before it was revealed Palpatine was alert , fans naturally bear it was Snoke , but it really piss more sense if it was Vader ’s former dark lord , coming for his apprentice ’s grandson .
One of the more singular aspects of Snoke was his disfigurement . He ’s a species of extraterrestrial being that has n’t been featured antecedently , but his top dog and face , and mayhap even more of his consistency , birth the marks of neat trauma , and upon closemouthed review , it ’s hard to understand why he ’s even alive . He has what is likely a major cut , which has caved in his skull , making a canon down his frontal bone , chunks of his face drop , specially at his cheeks , and a likewise mangled neck opening .
His injury appeared significant enough to have killed a normal person , and while he was quite herculean in the Force , he resembles a re - animate corpse more than he does a struggle - marred being . Could Palpatine have have his beat body , or maybe even have caused the trauma as he take control ?
We can only speculate at this point , since there ’s no clear evidence for how or why Palpatine would have assumed control of Snoke ’s body , but Palpatine send out his forces into the Unknown Regions , his close followers believed he ’d be born-again there , then 30 years later , theEmpire re - issue at as the First Order , lead by a powerful dark side Force drug user who corrupts a young Skywalker , occupy him as an apprentice , and desire to put down Luke Skywalker and the New Republic .
Interestingly , Snoke wore an obsidian doughnut on his digit , which theStar Wars : The Last Jedi : The Visual Dictionaryrevealed had two major Palpatine connection . First , the obsidian came from beneath Vader ’s castle on Mustafar , a major planet Palpatine had significant investment funds in . The ring was also engraved with glyphs used by the Four Sages of Dwartii , who Palpatine admire and had statue of in his position when he was Supreme Chancellor .
So , while there ’s no clear connexion , the circumstantial grounds ( and lack of evidence in some cases ) more than speaks for itself .
Why Would Palpatine Keep His Snoke Identity Secret?
The big motion this theory creates , though , is " if Snoke was Palpatine , why did he maintain the identity of Snoke instead of announce himself Emperor Palpatine reborn ? " The resolve would not only strike fear in the philia of the New Republic , but also attract the accompaniment of some of the Galax urceolata ’s remain Imperial loyalists .
The biggest answer to this is Ben Solo . Whether for wide-eyed cruel poetry , or because he actually needs the bleak power of Ben Solo , Palpatine would have had a lot more trouble change state Ben to the dingy side if he did n’t mask his lawful identity . Ben idolized Darth Vader , and while his grandad was also evil , we roll in the hay a younger Anakin Skywalker hadideals that survived his transformation into Vader . Vader wanted to raise Luke and bring down the Emperor , which he finally did . Using the Snoke identity operator and the pull to Vader , Palpatine would have been able to tempt in Ben Solo to his service .
But Ben was still buck . It was n’t until the end ofStar war : The Last Jedithat he seemed to truly , fully embrace the darkness . By this time , Palpatine will have moved to a new host and can reveal himself to Kylo Ren , either to gain his true fealty or to contend him forcontrol of the First Order .
There ’s really no conclusive evidence to show Snoke was n’t Palpatine , but much of that is due to the lack of info about Snoke in general . The small suggestion about his history and identity are enough to feel similarities to Palpatine , but also too minimum to make a conclusive statement one way or the other . So , while the strongest argumentation against the theory is that it postulate a number of assumptions to fill in the blanks , the fact that the Palpatine is Snoke theory also satisfactorily answers or expand on some of the big mysteries surrounding Snoke make it too compelling to dismiss .
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