WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, in theaters now.
Despite fan expectation leading some to see him becoming a major villain in his own right, the Star Wars franchise surprised audiences by killing off Supreme Leader Snoke in The Last Jedi. But even before he died, he came across as an empty and disposable attempt to recreate Emperor Palpatine. But the newest movie in the franchise actually found a way to make that inherent disposability part of his character in an interesting way.
One of the major reveals from The Rise of Skywalker is the origins of Snoke, who has secretly been a puppet of Palpatine's in the previous films.
A SUPREME PUPPET
Supreme Leader Snoke was introduced as the mysterious leader of the First Order in The Force Awakens. He's initially seen in the form of a massive hologram, who gives orders to his apprentice Kylo Ren and Hux, the commander of the First Order's armies. While he pulls the strings from behind-the-scenes, Snoke doesn't do much of substance in the film outside of being a corrupting influence on Kylo Ren. Like Emperor Palpatine, he was more accustomed to using his minions to do the hard work of going to war for him.
But while Palpatine's agents orchestrated a series of victories in The Empire Strikes Back, Snoke ended up outright betrayed and taken down in The Last Jedi. In the middle of gloating to a captured Rey after she's brought to him by Kylo Ren, he fails to realize that Kylo has decided to turn against him. Using the Force, Kylo turns and then activates Rey's lightsaber -- which happened to be resting next to Snoke. This cuts Snoke in half and easily kills him, removing him from the rest of the narrative. Kylo takes over his role as the Sith Commander of the First Order, pushing Snoke out of the conversation. He was a completely disposable bad guy, a neat narrative trick that subverted expectations. But it also made Snoke look like a bit of a chump.
A POINTLESS PROBLEM
That's what makes some of the opening moments of The Rise of Skywalker so much fun. Snoke is revealed to have been just a puppet figure installed by Palpatine, who was secretly alive and in hiding while he built up his armies once more. Copies of Snoke are revealed to be in various tanks around Palpatine's lab, suggesting he was a clone all along. Through Snoke, Palpatine was able to regain some of his control over the galaxy. While the First Order wasn't quite the Empire, they were certainly trying. Snoke became a big enough threat that he forced heroes like Luke and Leia to keep their focus away from the machinations of Palpatine, although Luke is revealed to have gone hunting for the Sith homeworld where Palpatine made his base.
It reinforces Snoke's disposability in the previous film but doesn't take away from it. Snoke was still a pretender to the throne of the Emperor and ended up going out like the insignificant speck he was in the grand scheme of things. It also gives him a minor but important purpose in the overarching narrative but still as the easily beatable footnote he was revealed to be in The Last Jedi. While some of the changes to the canon feel like The Rise of the Skywalker deliberately altering things it didn't like from the previous film (like the connection between Rey and Palpatine), the revelations about Snoke only solidify his role and fate.
Directed and co-written by J.J. Abrams, Star Wars: Rise of the Skywalker stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Billie Lourd, Keri Russell, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher, with Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant.