Spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Force Awakens!
There were hundreds of questions leading up to The Force Awakens. But for every one question the film answered, it seemingly spawned a whole band of new ones. One of the biggest enduring mysteries is what is up with Supreme Leader Snoke.
Very little was revealed about this character during production, and the finished product didn’t really answer who he actually is. All that’s known is that he runs the First Order, he wants Luke Skywalker removed from the picture, and he’s responsible for turning Ben Solo into Kylo Ren. He is probably a Sith Lord, and he casts a pretty menacing hologram, but is there more to his story? Here are the five most likely, and most serious theories (sorry Boba Fett theorists):
4. Darth Plagueis
This was the biggest theory leading up to the film’s release, and it’s still on the table. Darth Plagueis was master to the Emperor, and the Sith Lord who supposedly mastered death. James Luceno wrote an Expanded Universe novel to tell his story, and in it Plagueis is revealed to be a Muun, the species of the banking clan. Now, Supreme Leader Snoke sure doesn’t match the look of a Muun, so many fans have disregarded this theory.
But the old Expanded Universe got turned into “Legends,” and Luceno’s novel is no longer canon. So Plagueis can actually be any species the Lucasfilm Story Group wants him to be. All that’s really known about him is what Palpatine tells Anakin in Revenge of the Sith, which is very little. The Emperor claims to have killed his master, but isn’t in possible that the Sith who mastered death survived and has been biding his time?
