ST Regarding Rey and Snoke - we the audience were deceived - we did not see what we think we saw

Hi all,

Long time reader of these boards, never posted. Felt compelled to after seeing The Last Jedi today.

There is much more going on than meets the eye in this movie. I think people are taking things far too much at face value and not looking enough at the symbolism and that might point to an entirely different explanation.

1. Regarding Rey’s parentage. No one should believe what we are told in the movie - that Rey’s parents were scrapyard dealers who sold her off. When she has her ‘cave’ experience and she saw herself mirrored infinite times, both she and we (the audience) were led to believe she was going to come face to face with the answer regarding her heritage, only for Rey to ultimately come face to face with... herself. There was a very important message here. To me this is a communication that Rey is her own parent - she is a pure manifestation of the Living Force (another Anakin Skywalker basically) which would explain her incredible power.

It needs to be remembered that in The Last Jedi, Rey is repeatedly told she is “nobody” and “no-one”. We need to think about those words. “No-Body”. Remember what happened to Luke at the end end of movie when he died and merged with the force? His body disappeared and he became One with the force. He became “no body”. So I take Rey being told she is “no body” and “no one” as a Buddhist type analogy - she represents the Force, which exists outside of the self, outside of the ego and outside the body.

So I believe in Episode IX it will be revealed that Rey is a manifestation of the Living force - she is her own parent, and I believe this is clearly signposted in The Last Jedi.

2. Regarding Snoke. I’m not sure entirely why people would be so quick to think Snoke was dead, unless they believe what they ‘saw’. The movie takes great pains in the final act to show us that we the audience, and the characters in the movie themselves, can be deceived by an illusion - i.e. when Luke appears to be physically present on Crait, but is in actual fact not really there at all. It is possible that Snoke’s presence in the throne room (and his apparnt ‘death’) was due to an even more powerful illusion - this could either have been orchestrated by both Kylo and Snoke (ie. it was a set up with both of them involved) or it was an illusion masterminded by Snoke himself only, to deceive Kylo also. Bottom like, I believe Snoke will appear again in episode IX. He is very powerful.

 

Interesting...
Ad. 1) Good idea but I don't want to see another Famke Jansen X-men 3 god
Ad. 2) We will see, we will see (and I doubt that JJ brings so much surreal spirit to IX)

 

there was a line by Luke that says "no one is truly gone" orsome such, which made me think of Snoke.

and nah, I accept what I saw. Didn't like it, but I'd rather him not come back.

 

Snoke is More Powerful Than Darth Vader & The Emperor - Screen Rant

"Andy Serkis says that his Star Wars character, Supreme Leader Snoke, is more powerful than both Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious."


The V.D. says: "Snoke always hides his real appearance. Even when seen by others."

 

I admire the creativity, but I think your disappointment is manifesting elements of denial.

I did the same after Mass Effect 3.

Be open to the criticism that the writing in this trilogy is very spotty at best.

 

I don't recall saying I was disappointed? Star Wars has always been about symbolism and things being more than they appear - these were my interpretations of what we were shown.

 

The five stages, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance
nah guys snoke was not wasted they totally have bigger plans for him

 

I guess some people may have forgotten how Palpatine pretended to be one thing, but was really something else. Serkin has gone on record as saying recently that "Supreme Leader Snoke, is more powerful than both Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious."


So yes, they have bigger plans for him.

 

Ugh, Snoke could be back.

Kylo, it's time you enter the witness protection program? If he's still alive he's so coming to kick your butt.

Kylo? Don't know the guy. Never seen him. This is not the emo dark lord you are looking for.

Please for the love of god, do not make him Plageius.

 

Snoke was very powerful but WHO THE HELL WAS HE?

 

true.

 

"Mark Hamill was deceived by a lie. We all were. It appears that Kathleen Kennedy is behind everything, including the war. Kennedy is the Sith Lord we've been looking for. After the death of George Lucas, Mark became her new apprentice."

 

Good theory and I hope you're right.
But I wont spend another two years hoping for the "best".

 

Snoke probably hides out as General Hux...

 

I wish TLJ was an illusion.

Two hours of my life I won't get back.

Snoke - no idea where he comes from or why Palps didn't just off him if he was around in the OT/PT.

I don't believe Rey is nobody but that line 'not a part of this story' was so meta as to be cringeworthy. JJ may change the parentage again but I'm past caring. This sequel trilogy means nothing to me as through the movie I realised I didn't care what happened to any of the characters, except Luke because of the way he was being treated.

 

Snoke was terribly concieved as a character, form his name to appearance; of all the concepts they could have done for such an adversary they just gave us a contorted humanoid. Why not a pure Sith or something really sinister looking like a Vong or some of the supposed Muun-esqe designs. They need to be more creative in the alien character designs, this is where George Lucas excelled.

 

It's true that Sidious was a deceptive and manipulative psychopath, but I don't remember him ever crawling back out of his reactor shaft after ROTJ. TBH, I can't say I'm entirely sure what you're trying to insinuate here. I mean yes I think LFL has further plans for Snoke, but I think those plans probably involve spin-off novels/comics as opposed to IX.

BTW, it was nice to here Luke refer to Darth Sidious by name, as someone who grew up with the PT I appreciated that.

Edit:

I think you mean General Hugs?

 

I was trying to say that Palpatine masked his true identity (Sidious) to others and that the general theme of deception is present throughout the saga.

The Last Jedi visual dictionary, when talking about Snoke, says that he hides his true appearance from everyone, including those closet to him and those that directly interact with him. It says "Snoke disguises his true identuty" including to the "select few who are able to contact him directly". So if he disguises his true identity to even Kylo and Hux, that means that what we have seen on screen is not Snoke's true identity.

Given that Luke made him himself appear on Crait as an illusion, I was wondering if Snoke's apparent physical form in the throne room was also an illusion, but an even more powerful lllusion. After all, we have been told by Andy Serkis himself that Snoke is much more powerful than Vader, or Sidious.

 

Also... The name 'Snoke' is similar to 'Snake' (deception) as well as 'Smoke' - smoke is often employed in 'illusions'.

Illusion = "smoke and mirrors", which links to the two points I made at the start of this post - Rey being confronted with the hall of mirrors in the cave scene, and Snoke's apparent "death". Both of these may not be what they seem.

 

I think either A. Ghost_of_QuiGonJinn is right, or B. the writers of this trilogy have no idea what the hell they are doing.

So I'll go ahead and throw my hat in the positive thinking camp. I may be disappointed when IX comes around, but I'd rather have fun speculating possible nonsense than calling doom and gloom for the next 2 years. I do think there's a case to be made that everyone's just taking what happened in TLJ at face value and not considering the potential for misdirection. Luke will definitely be back for IX, no question, especially now that Leia can't be the focus. In what form? Not sure, but he'll be there, and probably with a big presence.

IX needs to raise the stakes from the previous films to be satisfying. Seeing as Rey kicked Kylo's butt (untrained mind you) in TFA, I think there will be more to the story than Kylo and Rey...again. I think Snoke WILL be back, and we will learn who or what he is. There are a lot of details developed for the character for him to be a totally throw-away stepping stone for Kylo. Otherwise, why not just make him a random human who was one of Palpatine's Advisers from ROTJ? We know that Snoke is NOT human (even if he's sort of human like), wealthy, damaged in very elaborate ways, and very powerful - supposedly "more powerful than Sidious or Vader" according to Andy Serkis. Serkis also says he knows Snoke's backstory, and even years ago, he knew that he's been around since at least the prequel era watching the Empire rise and fall. The VD also does say he hides his true nature from everyone. That's an odd detail to put in the VD if they knew he'd just be offed by a stray saber.

My money is on Snoke being either Plagueis (thus more powerful than Sidious and able to cheat death - even his own), or he is something else entirely which will be revealed in IX. Besides, if Luke is back, he'll need something to do. There's also that report of JJ and Terrio telling someone that IX will tie together all 9 episodes. I take that with a grain of salt, but it makes sense, and Snoke might be how that happens.

On Rey's parentage. Back when he was working on it, Colin Trevorrow said Episode IX will give a very satisfying answer to Rey's parentage. I doubt that plan changed as TLJ has been in the can for a while; even back when Trevorrow was still working on IX. JJ was the one who introduced Rey and the mystery of her origins, and I think he will pay that off in IX. I believe that was the plan all along. If you take everything at face value in TLJ, then what big surprises or reveals are left for IX? Both ROTS and ROTJ had surprise reveals (Palpatine is Sidious, Anakin turns evil and kills everyone, Vader was telling the truth to Luke, Obi-Wan basically lied, Leia is Luke's sister), and I'm sure IX will do the same.

I think that what Kylo said about Rey's parents was true....from a certain point of view. Her parents were junkers who were basically unimportant, and perhaps that's all Kylo knows. But I think either Ghost_of_QuiGonJin is right and Rey is a manifestation of the force like Anakin (thus why her nobody parents dumped her, likely being afraid of her) or she is a descendant of Palpatine (old Sheev had a mistress or two, one got pregnant, maybe she was dumped on Jakku and years later gave birth to Rey). I still think the Rey Palpatine theory is the only viable theory of her being related to anyone we've seen because of things like Rey=King in Spanish, Driver referring to her as a princess, theme similarities between Emperor's Theme and Rey's theme, and the usual Rey Palpatine quasi-evidence. But when I first saw TFA and her knack for flying the Falcon and the force, I thought Rey=Anakin/force-born.

Of course I could be wrong on all of this, but I like to think the writers had some kind of plan in mind, complete with misdirection. Incidentally, it would be the opposite of what happened in ESB - instead of everyone thinking the villain lied to the hero and finding out in the next one that he didn't, everyone thinks the villain told the truth, only to find out he didn't in the next one.

 

EDIT: Accidental double post

 

How is not matching up with fan theories "spotty writing". Rey Nobody makes sense. There's nothing wrong with it from a writing perspective, some people just desperately wanted her to be something else.

 

Kylo didn’t tell Rey. Rey said it and Kylo confirmed.

She is a nobody

 

I don't agree. This is disney trying to make kylo some mega star and they didn't like the fact people were more interested in snoke than kylo. So they killed snoke.

You see they took the mask completely off kylo

 

Maybe Snoke is like Agahnim in The Legend of Zelda: Not an illusion, but a decoy body telepathically controlled by the real person.