Why The Last Jedi Isn’t Revealing Too Much About Snoke’s Past

Why The Last Jedi Isn’t Revealing Too Much About Snoke’s Past
Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Snoke was introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the supreme leader of the First Order and Kylo Ren’s master. But his main purpose in that movie was delivering commands from afar via hologram, and we didn’t learn anything else about this mysterious humanoid other than he has a connection to The Force. Snoke will receive significantly more screen time this winter in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but his increased presence doesn’t mean we’ll learn a whole lot about his background. As director Rian Johnson put it:

Similar to Rey’s parentage, Snoke is here to serve a function in the story. And a story is not a Wikipedia page. For example, in the original trilogy, we didn’t know anything about the Emperor except what Luke knew about him, that he’s the evil guy behind Vader. Then in the prequels, you knew everything about Palpatine because his rise to power was the story. [In The Last Jedi], we’ll learn exactly as much about Snoke as we need to.

Although The Last Jedi will expand upon Snoke’s overall character and his goals, Rian Johnson provided the…