Why Star Wars: The Last Jedi Director Rian Johnson Killed Supreme Leader Snoke

The only thing about "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" that everyone can agree on is how people don't agree about it — but that's what happens when you take bold swings in a story. One of the boldest that writer-director Rian Johnson took was killing off Snoke (Andy Serkis), Supreme Leader of the First Order and master to dark warrior Kylo Ren, né Ben Solo (Adam Driver).

J.J. Abrams' "The Force Awakens" introduced Snoke as a sinister, shadowy figure, but it also largely glossed over how the galaxy had essentially returned to the status quo of the original trilogy. Snoke was clearly the film's analogue to Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), but how had this never-before seen villain climbed to such a powerful role? The vagueness made many fans assume that more information about the rise of Snoke would be revealed in the next two films.

Instead, in "The Last Jedi," Kylo Ren is spurred by his master's abuse and his new connection with Rey (Daisy Ridley). He murders Snoke, who had taken Rey's lightsaber, by switching the sword on with the Force and bisecting Snoke. A glorious fight erupts between Rey & Kylo and Snoke's royal guards (read our oral history of that battle here).

Many were disappointed by Snoke's death — including Andy Serkis, who was "gutted" by the decision as badly as Snoke himself was! Most had expected Snoke would be the trilogy's main villain and, in the two years between "Force Awakens" and "Last Jedi," went Reddit-mad theorizing about the "mystery" of who he really was. A common one was that Snoke was really an undead Darth Plagueis, late master of Palpatine. (Lucasfilm had debunked that one even before "The Last Jedi" was out.) Serkis himself was also teasing there was more to Snoke and his scarred appearance as late as November 2017.

But while "Star Wars" fans were intrigued by the blank slate of Snoke, Rian Johnson recognized there was a far more compelling villain. As he recently explained to Rolling Stone: 

"In reading J.J.'s script, and watching the dailies, and seeing the power of Adam Driver's character. The interrogation scene in the first movie, between Rey and Kylo, was so incredibly powerful. Seeing this complicated villain that's been created, I was just so compelled by that... I thought, 'This is such a compelling and complicated villain... this is who it makes sense going forward to build around.'"

In the aforementioned Rolling Stone interview, Johnson was asked about criticisms that his movie "undid" the story that "The Force Awakens" was setting up. This has come not just from "Star Wars" fans, but even "The Force Awakens" editor Mary Jo Markey. But Johnson was not trying to do that. His creative decisions "were all borne out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step?" For Johnson, killing Snoke was about pushing Kylo Ren's character further: "I took great pains to use [Snoke] in the most dramatically impactful way I could, which was to then take Kylo's character to the next level and set him up as well as I possibly could."

Personally, I think Johnson succeeded. Serkis is excellent as Snoke in "The Last Jedi," playing him as a vicious and temperamental villain. His two crucial scenes — berating Kylo for falling short of Darth Vader's legacy ("You were unbalanced, bested by a girl who had never held a lightsaber!") and his demise — are among the best in the film. I can understand Serkis being upset at not getting to play Snoke more, but ultimately I think Johnson was right that making Kylo Ren into the main antagonist was the right move. Unfortunately, that's not what happened.

Instead, Palpatine (somehow) returned. That made Snoke's death worse in hindsight because it destroyed the original purpose for it: elevating Kylo Ren into the main villain. Instead, the real Palpatine subs in for the dead faux-Palpatine and Kylo Ren follows down Vader's path of redemption. Boring!

A narrative has sprung up that, because Johnson killed Snoke and supposedly left the story without a villain, Abrams "had" to bring back Palpatine for the third film "The Rise of Skywalker." But that's so wrong — because Johnson had built up Kylo Ren as the finale's villain!

I'm more sympathetic to the complaints that Snoke's character and history should've been fleshed out before he died. Johnson has defended against this criticism by pointing out the original films didn't reveal anything about Palpatine's history or how he became Emperor before he died in "Return of the Jedi." I think it's a little different because Snoke's presence, as an ancient evil, feels anomalous to the original trilogy. 

But I also think exploring Snoke's history was a no win situation. There was probably no truly satisfying answer to who he was and I think the fans' fixation on the "mystery" of him came from a subconscious understanding that his character doesn't make sense. Snoke was a lazily conceived character: a clone of Palpatine to plug into a formulaic story because Abrams is a cinematic cover artist. Taking him off the board was the smartest move. The problems with Snoke, both before and after his death, are Abrams' fault, not Johnson's.

The same thing that made "The Force Awakens" such a crowd pleaser (it being a spiritual remake of the original "Star Wars") is why it was not a great storytelling foundation. It saddled the sequel trilogy with a "been there, done that" en media res narrative and aesthetic. When Johnson says it was his job to take Abrams' characters and story to "the next step," you could less charitably say his job was to add depth to them. Snoke was such a blank slate in "The Force Awakens" that you could project anything onto him (like the rest of the movie). Johnson recognized that he wasn't a compelling villain in his own right, so it was better to use him as a stepping stone for the actual villain: Kylo Ren.

We've seen the story of a dark warrior returning to the light and slaying his master before, with Darth Vader. Kylo kills Snoke in "The Last Jedi," but only to usurp him and fall deeper into the dark. That left Kylo's character and the story in uncharted territory for the third film. "This is not going to go the way you think," says "The Last Jedi" (via Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker). Only then, "The Rise of Skywalker" turns around and says, "Yes, yes it is, please like us!"

The "Star Wars" sequel trilogy didn't need a beat-for-beat plan, necessarily, but it needed a consistent creative vision. I'd take Rian Johnson's over J.J. Abrams' any day of the week.