Continuing in the spirit of my “Re-imagining Star Wars” series of posts, I put forth here a few ideas I think would have been great concerning Supreme Leader Snoke and the entire premise for the conflict in Episodes VII, VIII, and IX.
(Spoilers Ahead)
Canon Snoke: A Terrible, Half-Assed Character Creation
Snoke was a dividing factor in the New Trilogy right from the beginning, but now that The Last Jedi has happened, he’s truly fallen by the throne-side.
It no longer matters who he was, which means it really doesn’t mean all that much to us that Kylo Ren defeated him, does it? Sure, yes, the way Kylo killed him was clever (at least I personally thought), playing on Snoke’s pride in thinking that he knew every thought of his apprentice. But did it really have the same gravity as did Emperor Palpatine’s death? Shouldn’t it have had? All we were allowed to learn about Snoke was he was just a really powerful, highly influential leader of the bad guys who looked physically gross and that he opposed the not-gross-looking Daisy Rey Ridley and our plucky, underdog “Resistance” heroes. His physical appearance and his manner of speech were almost the primary reasons we knew we were supposed hate him. Oh yes, we see him in his giant hologram in The Force Awakens, and we know that, as the leader of the First Order he has blood on his hands. But that’s all.
That may be acceptable villain-creation for something like Transformers: Beast Wars, where the Predacons are scary-looking dinosaurs who fight the nice, friendly Maximals featuring, among other furry creatures, a gorilla and a cheetah… But not for Star Wars.
Star Wars has its own internal, consistent history which J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson should have had to take into account while writing their scripts and creating their new characters — and I am not thinking of the Expanded Universe books. I can show from just the movies, the Accepted Disney Canon, that Snoke is an awful character.
The reason we needed a backstory to Snoke, emphatically contrary to what Johnson said in an interview here, is that Star Wars fans already knew that the Sith were defeated in The Return of the Jedi, and we knew what Yoda said in The Phantom Menace, “only two there are, no more, no less; a Master, and an Apprentice.” It doesn’t matter if you think, “Phantom sucked!” It was part of the lore, “The Rule of Two.” You don’t mess with the lore established in the movies themselves. Disney can get rid of all the novels. Fine. But you undermine your own in-universe history and break your own rules when you go against the movies which you kept in your canon. It breaks the immersion.
We knew that Darth Sidious and Darth Vader were the Last Sith Lords. That was movie canon fact. So, where in the galaxy did Supreme Leader Snoke come from? Given the Rule of Two, Snoke’s story is not peripheral. It is interesting. It is intriguing. It should have been central. How do you not follow that line of story and try to at least give some thought to revealing this mysterious character’s background? The point of a mystery is that it gets revealed, eventually, much to the audience’s delight, right?
Johnson’s answer in that interview is that “fans of the original trilogy also knew next to nothing about the history of Emperor Palpatine.”
Except we did know!
We knew from the Prequels. The Prequels happened. You can’t just pretend you never saw them or that the events that happened in them don’t matter. The Original Trilogy no longer exists en medias res. In fact, it never did. George Lucas wrote Episodes I, II, and III at the same time or even before he wrote IV, V, and VI. We have had Palpatine’s backstory now for almost 20 years, and it was a good backstory: Palpatine was the titular “Phantom Menace,” hiding in the shadows, manipulating the galactic government, biding his time, exuding patience and strategy, playing two galaxy-spanning armies against the middle until the Clone Wars’ only possible outcome was to leave him last man standing, no matter if the Republic or the Separatists won, with him ruling the galaxy and having corrupted the most powerful Jedi ever, Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi of Prophecy, to the Dark Side. It was good!
It doesn’t matter if you hated them. The Prequels happened. They are canon. And your job was to work with the material that they gave you, Mr. Johnson. What a cop out! How lazy can you get in creating a character? J.J. Abrams shares a lot of the blame, but honestly, do you have no imagination? Could you not at least have tried?
The interview goes on: “Telling it [Snoke’s backstory] himself in The Last Jedi would have felt like he [Johnson] was shoehorning information on the audience that would have become a distraction. ‘It would have stopped any of these scenes dead cold if he [Snoke] had stopped and given a 30-second speech about how he’s Darth Plagueis,’ Johnson said. ‘It doesn’t matter to Rey. If he had done that, Rey would have blinked and said, ‘Who?’ And the scene would have gone on. And I’m not saying he’s Darth Plagueis!”
No. The distraction is the lack of information. Given what we thought we knew about the state of the conflict between the Light Side and the Dark Side of the Force, the Jedi vs. the Sith, we needed to know where Snoke fit in, beyond just him being powerful in the Force. We needed to know how he related to Palpatine, Vader, and the history of the Sith and the Dark Side. That is a huge source of historical, in-universe, dramatic conflict and intrigue, sir, and you and Disney blew it.
There were so many chances, too! J.J. Abrams could have hinted at it in any number of moments in The Force Awakens. What about the dialogue between Han and Leia, where they literally talk us through the backstory of their son and how it was Snoke who lured Ben to the Dark Side? If you can’t reveal the backstory more creatively, then fine, have characters tell it. But you can’t just have two of the main characters talk about the New Bad Guy as if they themselves aren’t curious about him! Did Han and Leia not wonder? Did Luke not know anything? Or scrap all that! Why not have Ben Solo himself tell the audience why he follows Snoke? Would he not, when he was first becoming Kylo Ren, have asked Snoke something about who he was, where he was from, how he became so powerful? Or in The Last Jedi, why not have Luke tell Rey about Snoke in one of those many unnecessary island scenes, if Johnson was so concerned about not stopping “any of these scenes dead cold” with Rey and Snoke and Kylo together in Snoke’s throne room?
Suppose Gandalf had never given Frodo the run-down on who Sauron is, and suppose no other hints of Sauron’s history were ever given during the trilogy, movies or books, and the events that take place in them: Doesn’t Sauron’s backstory lend gravitas to his menace? And wouldn’t LotR feel less important without a villain who has historical depth in Middle-Earth?
That’s all I’m after here. I want to be able to like Snoke as a villain character. I want to be able to like the New Trilogy. But as it stands I just can’t, and the lack of explanation for Snoke is one of the primary reasons why.
So, below is how Snoke should have been handled, in my opinion. I do not say “in my humble opinion,” because I’ve “lived” in the Star Wars universe ever since I began to love reading, and I don’t think I can quite achieve humility on this point. The first books I ever remember reading just for the pleasure of reading were the Jedi Apprentice books, featuring a teenage Obi-Wan and his early adventures with Master Qui-Gon. I must have been in sixth grade. And from that time on, up to the point where I entered college, I must have watched the movies multiple times a year and had read at least one Star Wars book series a year, every year, until my literary interests broadened in college. I skipped reading Harry Potter when they first came out and were popular almost for the sole reason that they were not Star Wars. At one point in time I owned over 100 books (I counted many times) from the Star Wars Expanded Universe (an achievement for which I was sort of famous, or infamous, or for which I was laughed at in high school). I treated it as “history.” I wanted to learn the “history” of the Star Wars universe, so I read chronologically from Obi-Wan’s time up through the furthest timeline of events in the universe involving Luke, Han, Leia, and their children, up through what I consider to be the greatest series of all, The New Jedi Order.
Part of My Personal Jedi Archive (Erased from Memory by Disney)
I’ve grown up with the video games, too. I know and love the “feel” of the Star Wars universe, in my own unique perspective of course, and everything below comes out that.
***
The Theme of Star Wars
The theme, or “the point,” the “what-the-story-is-about,” of the Star Wars Saga is vast, reaching to mythic levels of Good vs. Evil. The Primary Drama is Good vs. Evil, the Light vs. the Dark. To go any lower in dramatic import than this most basic of dynamics is to not live up to what Star Wars has already achieved. “Want vs. Need,” “Love vs. Duty,” or any other such worthy literary theme, is not on its own good enough for Star Wars.
But! You cannot write a story about Good vs. Evil as such. The drama of Light vs. Dark must be “incarnated” into Characters. That is true in any good story: The Story Theme must be “incarnated” into Story Characters. So, George Lucas, in his young, earnest, 1970s genius, inspired by Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (which I wrote about here), “incarnates,” or “translates,” or “scales down,” the struggle between the Dark and Light from its mythic, abstract dynamic into the individual personalities and actions of one family of Characters, the Skywalkers, and the lives of other characters that the Skywalkers touch throughout their history. Even their name, Skywalker, is important: “Walkers of the Sky.” They are the “demigods” in the classical sense, standing in relation to the Star Wars universe where Hercules and Aeneas stand in relation to Greco-Roman mythology, or where the Volsungs stand in relation to Odin in Norse mythology. Everyone who strives with or against the Skywalkers strives with or against the “gods.” In terms of the Theme, neither the Republic, nor the Empire, nor the Sith, nor the Rebels, nor the Jedi, are as important as the Skywalkers. Every other element of the Star Wars universe, even the Force itself, serves to help George Lucas show the Theme of Good vs. Evil and solve the Problem of how Good can triumph over Evil through who the Skywalkers are and the actions that they take.
This is how the Theme plays out over the course of the first six movies:
Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Much of the above mythic elements of Star Wars are buried deeply in the story structure of Episodes I through VI, but where they come closest to the surface of audience awareness is in the Prophecy of the Chosen One. We learn about this in Episode I through Qui-Gon and the Jedi Council. There is an ancient prophecy that says that one day, the Jedi will find, or be found by, the Chosen One, a “vergence in the Force” who will “bring balance to the Force.” In Episode III, Obi-Wan indicates that the Jedi belief was that the Chosen One was supposed to “destroy the Sith, not join them!” Yoda warns the Prophecy “misread, may have been,” because all it said was that the Chosen One would “bring balance.”
(If you are a Prequel-hater, and if the religious idea of “prophecy” seems to you out of place in Star Wars, let me submit that you are forgetting that Luke “foresaw” through the Force Han and Leia’s future plight on Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. Why not have some ancient Force user be able to “foresee” the Skywalkers and write down the vision in the form of a prophecy? And let me also submit that the Jedi were clearly thought of as a “religion,” as Han says in A New Hope, “hokey religions …” and that in Rogue One we literally have a monk who is not a Jedi, but is clearly connected with the Jedi in a religious sense.)
So, in Episode I, succinctly: Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, begins his Hero’s Journey, and the question of whether or not the Light Side or the Dark will win is still in the air.
Episode II: Attack of the Clones
The Chosen One, Anakin Skywalker, begins to fall to the Dark Side, and it begins to look like the Dark will win the battle against the Light, Evil against the Good.
Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith
Anakin becomes Darth Vader, abandoning the Light. It seems the Dark, Evil, has won, except for the glimmer of a New Hope in the bloodline of the Skywalkers continuing in the Children of the Chosen One (who therefore are part of the prophecy themselves), Luke and Leia.
Episode IV: A New Hope
Luke Skywalker, Son of the Chosen One, begins to learn how to use the Light Side of the Force.
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Luke learns the truth about his father. The drama of Light vs. Dark, Good vs. Evil, becomes “incarnated” fully into Luke vs. Anakin.
Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi
Luke confronts his father for the final time, and it is the love of a son for his father that gives the Light Side the edge and then, ultimately, the reawakened love of Anakin, the father, for his son, which finally defeats the Dark.
***
Where can someone like Snoke fit into all of the above? What area of the Theme has yet to be explored? The answer is: Very little. Which is why I was always skeptical of any possible Episodes VII, VIII, or IX. Oh yes, I would have loved to have seen some of the great Expanded Universe books on the silver screen, but the Theme was complete. We saw how the Light triumphed over the Dark. Any other story worth telling in the Star Wars universe was never going to be able to show anything substantially different than the Resolution of The Return of the Jedi. I think this is why George Lucas never did the sequel trilogy himself. He knew he had accomplished in I through VI everything he needed to accomplish to show the Theme of Good triumphing over Evil inside the fictional universe he created.
Finis.
The New Trilogy and Snoke, Re-Imagined
The only loose end from Episodes I through VI that I can see is this: Who made the Prophecy in the first place? This is where Snoke should have come in. Let’s tie the End to the Beginning.
But first: Do you remember the movie trailers for VII and VIII? They were good! I honestly enjoy them much more than the actual movies. I still get chills watching them. The music is the best!
These trailers, especially from The Force Awakens, gave me all of these visions and impressions and hopes running in my head before I saw the actual movie. I wrote about some of them in this post from Christmas 2015: “Star Wars, Episode VII: The Return of Myth?” The actual movies did not live up to the emotion that I got from the trailers. Not even close. The trailers are like refined poetry; the movies themselves are clunky, long-winded prose by comparison.
So, here is my proposed re-imagined premise for the New Trilogy and Snoke’s backstory, tied in with the already established lore from the canonical movies, with as little or none of the original and far superior Expanded Universe as my imagination can manage. I’ll do my best to work with what Disney has given us.
The State of the Galaxy After The Return of the Jedi
- After the Second Death Star’s destruction and Palpatine’s death, the Rebels gain even more support from Imperial defectors and other planets around the galaxy, and the shipyard industry of Mon Calamari (Admiral Akbar’s homeworld) in particular gains new resources to make bigger and better battleships. In the EU their answer to Star Destroyers were the Mon Calamari Star Defenders (they were awesome).
| - Within about 2 years the Rebels reform the Senate and retake Coruscant, creating the New Republic. Either Rebel Leaders Mon Mothma, a former senator from the Old Republic, or Leia Organa, (adopted) daughter of former senator Bail Organa, are the obvious candidates to become the New Supreme Chancellor – or maybe the New Republic will eschew the old, aristocratic-sounding titles in favor of “President” or “Prime Minister.” By the time of The Force Awakens, within that 30-year time period, there may have been 3 or 4 New Republic Prime Ministers.
| - The Galactic Civil War is declared officially over. However, guerrilla forces of die-hard Imperials still exist in the Outer Rim, perhaps even with Super Star Destroyers controlled by the Imperial Moffs (like Grand Moff Tarkin). The New Republic would have poured resources into building their own Super Star Destroyer-class ships to combat them. I’m thinking of the United States vs. the U.S.S.R. in the Cold War. It would be a galactic arms race, but one the Imperials knew they would lose since their resources and power had so greatly been diminished, especially after the Battle of Jakku. So, by the time the chronology of events reaches the first days of the new war with the First Order, the New Republic would have many, many warships and new and better starfighters, and they would probably have re-purposed Imperial Star Destroyers, even a Super Star Destroyer or two, in their fleet. You don’t get rid of enemy ships you capture, you re-purpose them, make them your own.
| - Luke Skywalker would have taken Master Yoda’s “great commission” to heart, to pass on what he has learned, and begun training a New Jedi Order coinciding with the creation of the New Republic. (One of the things Abrams and Johnson got right.)
| - It would probably have taken Luke several years to test Force-sensitive candidates and gotten together a large class of students. I don’t think he would have waited the 15 or so years for his nephew Ben to have come of training age to begin. There should have been Luke’s “First Class,” already trained and active in the Galaxy, and Leia should have been one of them, at least nominally – half-Jedi, half-politician in the New Republic. Ben Solo would have been part of the Second Class.
| - And the New Jedi Temple should have been on Yavin IV. The New Republic would have given Luke an entire planet for his own in order to rebuild the Jedi, surely? And it would have been great fan service – why not bring back Yavin IV?
All told, just before the First Order appears on the scene, this is the state of the Galaxy: A strong, thriving New Republic controls the majority of the Galaxy, and Luke’s New Jedi Order is slowly but surely putting the Jedi back to work keeping the peace and administering justice. The most powerful, most exciting, most celebrated of the New Jedi is the up-and-coming Ben Solo, son of the Rebellion Hero Han Solo and the New Republic celebrity politician Leia Organa Solo, and nephew to the legend himself, Luke Skywalker.
The Premise of the New Trilogy and How Snoke Fits into the Skywalker Saga
So, what happened? What did we miss? What did our heroes miss? They thought they had won. The Empire was defeated. Luke knew that Palpatine and Vader were the last of the Sith. Things were going so well! Where did the First Order suddenly come from, and who in the galaxy is Supreme Leader Snoke?
Let us say that Ben Solo has had visions, or dreams, all his life. A voice in his head sometimes, subtle, not often remembered. A sense of someone reaching out to him through the Force from a vast distance. Perhaps Luke misinterprets this, thinking it is the Force itself reaching out to Ben. Let us say that Yoda and Obi-Wan, Force ghosts, told Luke about the Prophecy of the Chosen One, and so Luke has this in mind, thinking that Ben is now the vessel for that Prophecy’s fulfillment, the shining pupil who will be the true return of the Jedi.
Ben, however, is convinced that the voice is the voice of his Grandfather, Anakin, whose Force ghost has not been seen either by himself or by Luke since Endor, and they don’t know why.
Let’s keep the motif of Han Solo being an absent father. Not necessarily a bad father, but an absent father due to his duties in the New Republic. Let’s not make Han go back to being a smuggler. That was stupid. That was just pure nostalgia driving narrative choices. It’s like Finn says in TFA, “The Rebellion General?” then Rey gasps and says “No the smuggler!” That was dumb. Han has just as much right to be remembered — no, MORE right to be remembered for what he did in the Rebellion. His smuggling days were under the radar, hidden, secretive. Not widely known, surely?
So, Han is an absent father, and Ben Solo, in typical angsty teenage fashion, latches on to the voice in his head and the idea of his powerful, famous Grandfather. “Show me again, Grandfather, the power of the Dark Side.” The voice in his head slowly would turn Ben’s thoughts to the Dark Side, slowly convince him that his legacy as a member of the Skywalker bloodline is to rule the Galaxy as the most powerful Force user, not “Jedi,” and that Luke is holding him back.
(Yes, this is Anakin’s complaint against Obi-Wan in Episode II, “he’s holding me back!,” but if J.J. Abrams can get away with repainting A New Hope and Rian Johnson can get away with repainting a hodgepodge of Empire and Return of the Jedi, then I’m going to allow myself to get away with repainting this particular bit of character motivation stolen from Anakin and Obi-Wan and transferred to Ben and Luke.)
Luke would be trying everything he can to stop Ben from falling to the Dark Side, offering warning after warning, “stifling” teenage Ben Solo, and fueling the fire of the voice in Ben’s head, luring him to the Dark Side. This is how Luke should have had a hand in Ben Solo’s downfall. Not the bullshit Rian Johnson came up with in VIII. Apart from anything else, Luke’s solution in VIII is way too predictable and easy. It wasn’t worthy of Luke’s character. Luke, the Hero, should have tried everything right. In this re-imagining, he did get everything right, and still failed.
It doesn’t take long until Ben goes AWOL from Yavin IV and the New Jedi Temple, following the voice he thinks is his Grandfather’s, and instead finds himself confronted by Snoke and the First Order. By this time, the Dark Side and Snoke’s whispers have so gotten hold of his mind that Ben’s embrace of the Dark Side is swift and (maybe) total.
Luke follows Ben, however, and for the first time learns about Snoke’s existence and must confront him. An epic Force battle ensues, but Ben turns on Luke in the fight, and Luke fails. His only option is to close off his own Force presence (like he does in TLJ, as Rey says she can sense nothing from him) so that Snoke cannot track him. Luke escapes, leaving Ben in Snoke’s hands.
Luke cannot help, however, feeling echoes in the Force, as Obi-Wan felt the deaths of everyone on Alderaan, when his other Jedi pupils are systematically slaughtered by Snoke and Ben. Despair takes hold of him, and he does indeed begin to wonder if the Jedi shouldn’t just disappear, since they always seem to create students who inevitably fall to the Dark Side through the failure of their teachers. That’s not a bad story. However, Luke Skywalker is Luke Skywalker, and even though he blames himself and cannot face Han and Leia for the loss of their son, he does not fully retreat from the Galaxy, because he learned something about Snoke in that confrontation which prompted his search for the First Jedi Temple.
So, just who is Snoke? Snoke should have been an ancient Jedi, in fact the Jedi Master who saw and recorded the Prophecy of the Chosen One in the first place. He should have been alive when one of the history books among the ancient Jedi texts in Luke’s tree-temple on his island was written, and from that Jedi history text Luke should have learned the first part of Snoke’s backstory: How in the Last Great War between the Jedi and the Sith, after he saw his Prophecy, Snoke fell to the Dark Side, but before the War’s end he disappeared from all records. The Jedi text would conclude this section of history by announcing that this was the beginning of the Great Peace, the time of the “over a thousand generations” when the Jedi were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic, as Obi-Wan says they were in Episode IV, the “over a millennia” of time during which the Sith have not been seen, as Jedi Master Ki Adi Mundi says in Episode I.
Throughout the history of the Galactic Republic, Snoke had been trapped in the Unknown Regions, the uncharted, unexplored quadrant of the galaxy on the edge of which Starkiller Base is located. Snoke had fallen to the Dark Side, joined the Sith, and gone on an expedition into the Unknown Regions when the Sith realized they were about to lose the war against the Jedi. Snoke is either so powerful in the Force that he can prolong his life indefinitely, or else he is of an alien race like Maz Kanata or Yoda, who seem able to live for about 1,000 years or more.
Once inside the Unknown Regions, the only safe space lanes behind Snoke become blocked by black holes or supernovae (there are hyperspace charts for a reason in the Star Wars universe — Han says as much to Luke in IV, “bounce too close to a supernova and that will end your trip real quick”). For 1,000 years or more, Snoke is trapped inside the Unknown Regions. Making the most of his time, he and the Sith soldiers who went with him create the First Order. They rule many planets in the Region throughout this millennium. All the while, Snoke hones his powers in the Dark Side. He becomes so powerful that he can see across vast distances of space, and he is aware, when the time comes, of Palpatine’s rise to power. However, Palpatine’s Empire lasts only about 25 years. Paltry! Snoke has ruled the First Order for a millennia. Snoke is enraged by how feebly the Sith have been led by Palpatine, and vows to return to Charted Space to restore the glory of the ancient Sith.
Then, after Palpatine and Vader die, the remnant of the Empire retreats into its last strongholds, hidden on the edges of the Unknown Regions. In an attempt to regain power, some clever Imperial scientist invents the technology that allows them to drain whole stars for energy. Their first test is to siphon off the last remnant energy of a supernova, thought to be a safe bet because the star has already gone nova and has been slowly burning out for 1,000 years. When they clear it, the ancient space lane opens up again.
In no time at all, Snoke and his First Order fleet appear out of hyperspace. “The true Sith have returned!” This would have been a real chance to have gone somewhat in a “new direction” (as every Last Jedi apologist insists that movie is). A chance to have invented brand new starship designs and capabilities, not merely Star Destroyers with slightly different geometry. The remnants of Palpatine’s Empire quickly join with the First Order (the appearance of which would have seemed like providence to the Imperial true-believers), and they perfect the Starkiller technology with genius scientists from the Unknown Regions.
However, technological supremacy is not enough for Snoke. No, he has been mulling over his own Prophecy of the Chosen One for 1,000 years. It drove him almost insane to have to watch as Anakin’s life came and went, and Snoke himself was not there to see to it that the most powerful, Force-sensitive being to ever live was the ushering in of a “balance” to the Force that put the Dark Side in power and the Sith in charge. Thankfully, the Bloodline of the Chosen One survived. Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa Skywalker Solo may prove incorruptible, but the Child of Leia, the Grandson of Anakin Skywalker, with all his raw and as yet unfocused, practically untrained ability, would do just as well. Maybe even better, “something truly special” as his bit of dialogue states in one of the above movie trailers.
Now for another awesome new direction: The stage is set for some truly epic space battles. Think: Hundreds of capital ships in dozens of fleets around the entire galaxy, whose flagships would have been the Super Star Destroyers and MC Star Defenders of the New Republic Fleet, clashing with the awesome firepower and alien technology of the First Order from the Unknown Regions. The size of the War between the First Order and the New Republic would have dwarfed the Clone Wars, and then, Episode VII could have culminated with the First Order’s completion of the Starkiller Base and the destruction of Coruscant itself (not the “Hosnian System,” or whatever meaningless planetary system is actually destroyed in TFA). Throughout the New Trilogy then, this War would have been one strain of the plot, and the New Republic would fail over and over again, unable to get even close to the Starkiller until the very end, in Episode IX. Why not have a superweapon survive for longer than one movie? That would have been a “new direction.”
Rey and the Destiny of the Light
The other, more personal, character-driven strain of the plot of the New Trilogy, then, would have followed Rey and her search for Luke and her burgeoning connection to and power in the Force. Which brings up the question of who, exactly, Rey is and where she fits into the Saga of the Skywalkers.
Let’s keep the canon movie story that she is truly no one. Her parentage and bloodline have nothing to do with the Skywalkers, Kenobis, or Palpatines, or any Jedi or Sith. She is truly a new Force anomaly, the same way Anakin was. A “new direction.” That is the point of Rey. She is the “awakening” of The Force Awakens, obviously, and that awakening is the signal that the Skywalker prominence in the Force is coming to an end.
Now, here is another enormous point of idiocy on Rian Johnson’s part — what in the world was the point of showing us the ancient Jedi texts, and what in the galaxy was the reason for Luke to search out the First Jedi Temple, if Luke’s only aim was to hide? Wouldn’t any remote, unnoticed, unremarkable planet have done? Why did it have to be the First Jedi Temple? If Luke was disillusioned with the Jedi, why would it be the First Jedi Temple? There should have been a point to the setting. Character and Setting — two of the main components of a story.
So, in this re-imagining, we have to redeem the setting of planet Ahch-To and the significance of the First Jedi Temple, too.
Let us say that when Luke finds the Temple on planet Ahch-To, he experiences a vision of his own — a new Force prophecy to combat Snoke’s ancient prophecy. Luke is shown that he will be found by someone very strong in the Force, maybe stronger than he is himself, that he “will not be the last Jedi,” and that he must wait in the Temple until he is found. That doesn’t mean he can’t give some help, however, so he creates a star chart map that will lead to Ahch-To.
But! He cannot risk the chart falling into the hands of the First Order and Snoke, so he takes two ancient Jedi holocrons from the Temple which can only be accessed by the Light Side of the Force. One holocron he leaves with whoever it was who initiated the events that led to the holocron-data drive being in the possession of Lor San Tek (the old man who gives the map to Poe in VII). The other holocron is what he sends out with R2-D2 in his X-Wing, truly stranding himself on the island. R2 will erase his own memory once he gets back to New Republic space and into the company of Leia and C-3P0 once again, letting them know the plan, giving them hope even while they, too, must wait and watch as the First Order and the New Republic cause death on a massive scale the size of which the Galaxy has never known. Leia can open R2’s holocron. Then, seeing the incomplete map, she forms the “Resistance” as a separate, special forces branch of the New Republic military for the purpose of seeking out the other half of the map to Luke. Only she wouldn’t call it the Resistance, because that never made sense, unless it is a misdirection or code name to keep the First Order from finding out the true purpose of the Resistance.
Now, if the Force is “an energy field that surrounds us, penetrates us, binds the galaxy together,” as Obi-Wan says, and if the Force is literally in every living thing, and even in rocks and X-Wings, as Yoda tells Luke on Dagobah, how will the Force react when Snoke, the Dark Side, and Starkiller begin extinguishing life and causing destruction and pain on an unprecedented scale across the cosmos?
Let us say, the Force will “awake.” And Rey, a nobody from nowhere, is chosen by the Force itself to help the Skywalker Prophecy’s fulfillment and finally bring the balance to the Force that the Prophecy promised, and she will become the new focus for the Light Side of Force’s action in the universe. Events conspire to bring Rey into contact with Leia and her “Resistance” in the midst of the greater War between the New Republic and the First Order, and Leia, having had at least some training in the Force, recognizes Rey’s potential and gives her all the aid she can to help find and open the holocron at last.
Snoke and Kylo Ren, however, are aware of Rey through the Force, “there has been an awakening. Have you felt it?” And so, through their Force knowledge and intelligence gathering done by the First Order, Snoke and Ben learn about the existence of the map, and then the race is on to find it first — Rey vs. Ben. Like in The Force Awakens, Rey is the victor, getting the holocron, using her (not yet fully developed for Pete’s sake!) Force sensitivity to open the holocron and reveal the star chart to Ahch-To. Then, when she finally arrives on the island and meets Luke for the first time, its significance is that much greater, to both Luke and to us, the audience.
From that point on, Rey should have been in training with Luke. She should have learned about the deep history of the Jedi, about Snoke’s origins, and about the Prophecy, and about Luke’s conviction that the Jedi, as the institution that they were, needed to end, but afterwards be reformed. They need to start again, and do what they can to learn from the Jedi’s failures to prevent future falls to the Dark Side, and Rey is the blank slate of that new beginning.
I think that new beginning with Rey is something like what Rian Johnson was going for, but with his blast shield down he couldn’t see, and the Disney training droid of time constraints and profit-margins got the best of him.
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Conclusion
So, in this re-imagined premise for the New Trilogy, Episode VII ends with the First Order’s Starkiller Base destroying Coruscant and sending the New Republic reeling, but not yet defeated, on the one hand; on the other hand, we have seen how Rey awakens to her Force powers, links up with Leia, and finds and uses the holocron star chart to find Luke and the First Jedi Temple.
Rey would have in this Episode VII not yet confronted Kylo Ren. At least not successfully. If she had, she certainly would not have been able to best him in lightsaber combat or a battle with the Force. Instead, let us say that Han Solo gets in the way before Kylo can capture or confront Rey, and as he does Ben hesitates, as he really does seem to do in TFA, but Snoke’s influence is still too strong in his mind, and that is why and how Han dies, a sacrifice to save Rey, which could have easily coincided with his fatherly attempt to reconnect with his son and bring Ben home again to the Light Side.
Given this set-up, how would Episode VIII have gone? That’s a question for another blog post. This one is already just about 6,500 words long. But it all came out of just one idea — that Supreme Leader Snoke’s identity should have meant something. Great villains create great stories and great heroes.
Maybe we will get some kind of Snoke backstory yet. But if he really truly is dead, it still won’t matter. And if he isn’t dead, then we have descended out of epic myth into soap opera territory. As Snoke’s character actually is, just the generic, gross-looking, powerful bad guy who appears out of nowhere with no anchor in the historical lore of the universe, he brings down the characters of Rey and Ben Solo with him. They all could have been so much more.
edge of legible 