Few scenes in Star Wars have stirred as much debate as the moment Kylo Ren slices Supreme Leader Snoke in half during The Last Jedi. The mysterious big bad introduced in The Force Awakens, rumored to be Darth Plagueis or some other ancient Sith mastermind, was built up with ominous weight, only to be suddenly and shockingly killed off halfway through Episode VIII.
Now, writer-director Rian Johnson is revisiting that controversial choice and doubling down on why it was the right move.
In a new profile with Rolling Stone, Johnson addressed not only the backlash surrounding Snoke’s death, but also the misconception that he made The Last Jedi in isolation, with no coordination with J.J. Abrams. Johnson said:
“We communicated. We met and I spent days with him and was able to get into his head and all the choices he had made. That having been said, I communicated and I went and made the movie. And he was in the middle of Force Awakens.
“Ultimately, I feel like the choices in it, none of them were born out of an intent to ‘undo’ anything. They were all borne out of the opposite intent of, how do I take this story that J.J. wrote, that I really loved, and these characters he created that I really loved, and take them to the next step?”
For Johnson, the goal wasn’t to shock for the sake of it or to wipe Abrams’ work clean. He says he took Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s request seriously when she asked him to craft the Empire Strikes Back of the sequel trilogy.
“Kathy [Kennedy] said, ‘We’re looking at someone to do the Empire of this series.’ I took that assignment very seriously. Maybe more seriously than someone would have liked.
“I guess to me that didn’t mean making something that just had nods to Empire — that meant trying to genuinely do what Empire did.”
So when it came time to deal with Snoke, Johnson saw an opportunity, not to remove a villain, but to elevate another one.
“That was, in reading J.J.’s script [for Force Awakens], and watching the dailies, and seeing the power of Adam Driver’s character. The interrogation scene in the first movie, between Rey and Kylo, was so incredibly powerful.
“Seeing this complicated villain that’s been created, I was just so compelled by that. This is all a matter of perspective and phrasing, but to me, I didn’t easily dispense with Snoke.”
Instead, Johnson says he used Snoke’s death as a deliberate turning point to push Kylo Ren into full villain mode.
“I took great pains to use him in the most dramatically impactful way, which was to then take Kylo’s character to the next level and set him up as well as I possibly could.
“I guess it all comes down to your point of view. I thought, ‘This is such a compelling and complicated villain. This is who it makes sense going forward to build around.’”
Of course, Abrams later pivoted back to the old school by bringing back Emperor Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, revealing that Snoke was merely a puppet of the Sith Lord all along.
Rey was also retconned as Palpatine’s granddaughter, backtracking the idea that she was “nobody,” another creative decision that divided fans.
Still, love it or hate it, Johnson’s vision for the middle chapter wasn’t about playing it safe or satisfying every theory. It was about shifting power, challenging expectations, and, for better or worse, surprising the audience.
