‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Rumor: What Was Really Up With That Snoke Force Lightning Scene

A month after Star Wars: The Last Jedi hit the big screen, a lot of fans are barely done scrutinizing every little thing in the movie. One scene that continues to pique their curiosity is Snoke’s use of Force lightning.

Fans will remember in Star Wars: The Last Jedi how Snoke was talking to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), reminding him of his failure and the disgrace of being beaten by someone who hasn’t received any training. Even though it was Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) first time wielding a lightsaber, she managed to defeat him.

Snoke showed his disappointment by using Force lightning on his apprentice. However, the lightning made contact with the ground first before it hit Kylo Ren, who was thrown across the room as a result.

While this trick is not new in the Star Wars saga, as Emperor Palpatine had used it several times, how it was executed in Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a bit different.

Fans know very well that to use the technique, Darth Sidious raises both his hands to hit his opponents directly. Snoke, on the other hand, almost lazily uses one hand to summon the Force lightning, which Star Wars fans found a bit odd.

The well-known Star Wars watcher and YouTuber, Star Wars Theory, believes that this could showcase of how powerful he is with the Force but also how weak he is physically.

He says that Snoke might have simply used the Force to steer the lightning towards Kylo Ren. After all, Snoke relies mostly on his mental Force power because of the frailties and deformities that make him physically weak and vulnerable.

However, there are also those who speculate that half of the process of using Force lightning is the intention behind it. Some fans have speculated that for Star Wars:The Last Jedi, Snoke might have done it on purpose as a show of power while still disciplining his apprentice without really hurting him.

After all, directly hitting him could have done more damage than he intended. His planned to simply teach him a lesson and physically destroying him would impair his evil scheme.

If he intended to kill him, he would have done the same thing Palpatine did in the Star Wars prequels and used both hands and directed the lightning directly at the target.

Then again, it was said that Snoke is more powerful than Darth Vader and Palpatine, which could mean that he only needs half the effort to summon Force lightning.

But it looks like the thinking behind the odd, but cool Star Wars: The Last Jedi scene was less about the story but more about the physics of it all.

As per the ever-ardent Star Wars watcher and Youtuber, Mike Zeroh, Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer and director Rian Johnson had explained that he was just making the scene as realistic as possible. In the real world, lightning strikes the ground first before it hits the closest object to it.