‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’: Snoke’s Friendship With Luke And How He Plays Into Palpatine’s Plan B

The official novelization of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has revealed some exciting details about the characters that did not make it in the silver screen.

One of the biggest revelations from the novel, which was written by Jason Fry, has to do with Snoke, whose story was not fleshed out in the film and was instead killed off halfway, much to the disappointment of many fans.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer and director Rian Johnson has explained time and again that the sequel was not the venue to delve into Snoke’s past because it was not important to the story he was telling.

While the novel does not divulge much, it did confirm a few important things—one of them being that the First Order leader and Luke Skywalker were not enemies before the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

As detailed by Screen Rant, it is mentioned in the Star Wars: The Last Jedi novelization that the two characters, who would go on to be rivals, actually “connected” at some point.

Snoke held Luke in a high regard due to the Jedi master’s desire to learn more about the history of the Force and his determination to rebuild the Jedi Order from scratch.

While the Star Wars: The Last Jedi novelization did not go into detail about the extent of Luke and Snoke’s history, it is suggested that they met several decades after the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, just shortly before Luke started an academy to train a new generation of Jedi. Skywalker appears to have known about him during his search for ancient Jedi artifacts.

It was not elaborated on in the book how the two exactly made that connection. However, many fans believe that the Force projection ability, which was introduced in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, offers the possibility that their correspondence was done through such means.

The popular Star Wars watcher and YouTuber The Stupendous Wave thinks this would make sense as this would explain how Snoke successfully concealed his connection to the dark side of the Force from Luke.

Interestingly, the book notes of how he genuinely admired and respected Luke for his pursuit of ancient knowledge so at that point, it seemed that things between them were amicable, and Snoke was truly impressed with him.

Sadly, the next thing the book mentions about the two is Luke being so adamant in stopping whatever Snoke had planned. This forced the baddie to deal with him too, but it did not seem to be all that challenging to him.

Despite the respect he had for Luke as noted in the book, the way supreme leader talked about his former acquaintance in Star Wars: The Last Jedi more so in Star Wars: The Force Awakens suggested he was never fond of him.

This would not come as a shock especially with the possibility that he just struck a friendship with him since his grand plan required it. He just unexpectedly grows to respect the guy, but not enough to have a change of heart.

The Stupendous Wave also pointed out that the glimpses of Snoke’s past detailed in the novelization tie directly to the Aftermath novels, which are set before the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and explore the contingency plan that Emperor Palpatine put together should things do not go well for him and the Empire.

The Star Wars watcher explained how Palpatine felt Snoke’s existence in the Unknown Regions despite his efforts to hide from him because he considered the dreaded Darth Sidious as a threat.

Darth Vader could not detect Snoke though, which made his master think that he is conflicted, leading him to consider Snoke as his Plan B.

He ended up being the successor anyway, but not in the way Palpatine envisioned. The Star Wars: The Last Jedi novel details that Snoke was the one who made it happen, and it involved a lot of deception and bloodshed.

While there is still so much to learn more about Snoke, he is a goner as far as Star Wars: The Last Jedi is concerned. The hope is that he will be back in Star Wars: Episode 9, but it is speculated that fans will learn the rest of his past in spinoff movies or comic books instead.