Who exactly is Snoke? We’ve asked this question many times and provided the best insight we could. According to Anthony Breznican, arguably one of the most knowledgable journalists on Star Wars, Snoke is Snoke. The question is, can we glean anything about his backstory from the latest information on the character?
Snoke may not be any known character in the Star Wars canon, but his backstory is no doubt intriguing to fans everywhere. It has been said before that Snoke saw the rise and fall of the Empire, so he’s been around for a long time.
In a recent article at Entertainment Weekly, Anthony Breznican interviews performance-capture actor Andy Serkis and discusses some new details about Snoke. Probably one of the most significant statements in this article comes from Andy Serkis:
“He has suffered and he has suffered injury. The way that his malevolence comes out is in reaction to that. His hatred of the Resistance is fueled by what’s happened to him personally.”
The implication here is that his injuries are due to the Resistance. What exactly does this mean? We know that the Resistance was created during the Bloodline novel, which takes place 28BBY. This would place the events that created the Resistance about 6 years before The Force Awakens. The question is, could Snoke’s injuries have been inflicted around this time?
We learned back in April of last 2016 that The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson contributed some ideas to the Bloodline novel. However, it is unknown what ideas he contributed. It could be just some bookkeeping points where the story connected to TLJ, or it could be something more. If Rian contributed anything about Snoke, it wasn’t obvious as Snoke was not explicitly mentioned in the novel. Somehow the timeline doesn’t add up there. I don’t think 6 years is enough for a character that wasn’t even mentioned during Bloodline to be injured by the Resistance, unless he went by another name. However, we know at some point during this period, Snoke started recruiting Ben Solo to join him. All this suggests that Snoke was either in hiding, or somehow in hibernation during the events of Bloodline.
Breznican also says that regarding Snoke that:
Others endure the same agony but deal with it by magnifying that pain — and blasting it back upon the world.
So it’s possible that Snoke is merely projecting his pain upon the Resistance even though the pain comes from somewhere else.
One very intriguing clue comes from a recent tweet from Matt Martin:
Although we don’t know what spoiler this could be referring to, we have one clue. The name “Resurrection” might mean something. The notion that Snoke is “risen from the dead” goes way back to some of the first leaks from SWU about him–before we even knew his name.
Andy Serkis’ character basically looks like an old man, zombie like, almost risen from the dead.
Now that we know what Snoke looks like, it’s pretty clear what they meant by this. Is it possible that Snoke was resurrected? Lots of people have speculated about some connection here to the Battlefield II DLC, or connection to Palpatine. I doubt it has something to do with Palpatine, but it is interesting that this Resurrection DLC won’t be available until Dec 13th, just one day before the release of The Last Jedi.
The idea that Snoke is an ancient being that was resurrected to lead the First Order is an intriguing one. What is really intriguing about all this is if Snoke is resurrected from some very long hibernation, it could place his backstory as part of some ancient time in the galaxy. Therefore, Snoke’s backstory could be part of what is to be explored in Rian Johnson’s trilogy. That said, as we have emphasized before, the indication is that this new trilogy will introduce new characters. So could Snoke fit into such a trilogy? It’s possible if we consider he has already been introduced. As Rian Johnson stated in the above mentioned EW article:
“Similar to with Rey’s parentage, Snoke is here to serve a function in the story, and, you know, a story is not a Wikipedia page.”
So it’s very possible that we won’t get all the answers in this trilogy, much like we didn’t get any details of the Emperor’s backstory until the prequels. The details just might be hinted at, and the full story is yet to come.
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