Star Wars Episode IX: New fan idea suggests Snoke’s still out there

Although fans have tried to decipher the mystery of Snoke even after his death, a Star Wars fan suggests Snoke may not be gone from a certain point of view.

Death matters in the Star Wars universe, at least to some extent. Sure, characters like Darth Maul survived their apparent deaths only to come back later, and Force ghosts are always a possibility. However, in a new fan idea found by Nerdist and surfacing originally on Reddit, there might be a third option for Supreme Leader Snoke: not being dead because he’s Kylo Ren.

The theory holds that Snoke was just a manifestation of Kylo Ren’s subconscious and power in the Force: “This whole time Snoke causes so much chaos with Kylo Ren acting as his lap dog, but it was really Kylo Ren’s unearthed dark abilities giving the real orders.” It also predicates the theory on the idea that the Dark Side has its own wild powers. Nerdist then picks up on the idea that it would “make the true villain of the sequel trilogy Kylo Ren, not some shadowy figure in the background.”

However, Kylo Ren is already the true villain of the sequel trilogy, with or without this Snoke connection. He may not always be the leader, but he drives Luke Skywalker into hiding and otherwise causes most of the problems that our protagonists have to face. Sure, he may or may not be on a redemptive path, but the Star Wars saga has always held that someone on the Dark Side is not necessarily the same person in entirety as who they were before they turned.

As Obi-Wan so famously tells us in Return of the Jedi, there’s a “certain point of view” that Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader are not necessarily the same, one that Luke Skywalker later echoes: “I’ve accepted the truth you were once Anakin Skywalker, my father.” In the same vein, Kylo Ren and Ben Solo may not be the same person, either, and so it would be possible to defeat Kylo Ren and bring back Ben Solo, much like Anakin’s return in Return of the Jedi. Adding a third layer on this all would just complicate matters further.

Additionally, although the fan is correct in noting that he ascends to a new level of villainy by killing Snoke, it seems they don’t consider the possibility that getting rid of Snoke is, in its own way, a follow-up to Vader: killing to save someone else powerful, who is being tortured by your mentor. There may not be a love component to his saving Rey, but otherwise, it does neatly echo. “I will finish what you started,” Kylo Ren promises Vader’s helmet in The Force Awakens.

What if finishing what Vader started means finally ruling the galaxy without dying in the process, even if it means killing what’s left of Ben Solo? The next step in Vader’s journey after killing Palpatine is to die. Kylo Ren doesn’t want to do that, and he clearly has aspirations to rule even as there’s still some conflict with the good still inside him.

Whatever happens in Episode IX when it releases later this year, we’re sure that fans will be debating Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, and the Dark Side for years to come.