Ok, the last major blah blah post for me, and it goes to what I think is the heart of the story. I've looked at it from the stanpoint of what I want and what I think.
Who is Supreme Leader Snoke?
Ok, what we know about Snoke is fairly limited and comes from what we saw in the movie and what we've heard from interviews from Andy Serkis and Abrams and other sources.
From a physical standpoint all we've seen is a holograhic view of Snoke, apparently he's extremely large, however like Palpatine this could be an illusion, as the former ruler of the galaxy tended to project himself as an enormous figure. The other thing that we've seen is that Snoke is humanoid with a great deal of scaring and what looks like burns.
It also looks like his head is mis shapen. He could be an alien, or he could just be an incredibly old battered humanoid.
Now what do we know about Snoke? Precious little, we know that he was active in the Clone Wars, we know that at some point he got close to and seduced Ben Solo turning him to the Dark Side. We also know that he's obsessed with the destruction of the Jedi Order, and that he's conversant in the Dark and Light Side of the Force. We have also been told that he's a powerful force user, but have seen precious little of that.
At the end of the movie Snoke also makes the decision to complete Kylo's training as Kylo has finally fully accepted the Dark Side, it feels like he didn't do much training of his apprentice to this point.
So what does that mean. It means that Snoke is a mystery.
Now most of the fans of Star Wars seem to be convinced that Snoke is the re-emergence of Darth Sidious' master Darth Plagueis. The Sith Lord who supposedly had the ability to master life over death.
We've even seen some pretty heavy handed clues that Snoke is indeed Pagueis. When Kylo confronts his father and his destiny on the bridge he states that the "Supreme Commander is wise" which goes back to Palpatine stating in the best scene in the prequels that Plagueis was wise. If you also listen to Supreme Leader Snoke's theme music it echo's the music played during that scene in the prequels.
However. we know that Abrams knows that Star Wars fans are fanatical about hints and spoilers and would probably put misdirections in to the movie to keep the speculation going, so I'm almost willing to discount both of these things.
Now I am going to say that I sincerely hope that Snoke is not Plagueis because I think it will destroy not only the prequels but the original trilogies in terms of the menance that was Lord Sidious/Palpatine.
Right now, when you look at Darth Sidious he has to be ranked as one of the most powerful Sith Lords in the Star Wars universe, not only that but he was a cagey brilliant careful strategist.
If you go by EU which sadly some elements are now non canon, if you read the book Plagueis, you realize towards the end that Sidious manipulated the Sith Lord from the start in his pursuit of power, and in the end found the perfect opportunity to kill Plagueis. Even after he killed his sleeping master with force lightning while gleefully telling him that he had been played, Sidious worried that Plagueis peerless abilities to bring things back to life concerned him and he stood watching the dead body for several minutes, but the Force basically flexed and told Palpatine that he was now the Sith Master and opened the universe to him, it was actually a very well written scene.
So if Plageuis had survived his death would it have been in physical form? I can't see Palpatine not having the body destroyed, so that means some kind of either force ghost, or essence transfer.
In the quest for immortality the Jedi found it with Qui-Gon who managed to become one with the force, this occured because Jedi are not afraid to die or let go of their physical selves. For the Sith, this is something that they would never do, as the Sith fear losing their power which is selfish, and a Sith views death as the ultimate loss of power. The one thing that I hate about the EU is that every Sith Lord becomes a malignant force ghost. Bane, Nihlus, Exar Kunn and others all became ghosts.
So back to how would this Plageuis being Snoke wreck the previous Star Wars movies?
Palpatine was the ultimate package of power and opportunism. In the ROTS book Count Dooku muses that the Dark Side when viewed on the metaphysical plane looks like a lightnight storm. Palpatine looks like a disc of complete black on the horizon. With the Jedi it looks like a window looking over a glassy sunny field. With Palpatine, Dooku mused he was always looking through the windows finding the best way in and looking for opportunity.
Palpatine managed to politically manipulate his path to power, played a war from both ends like a chess set. He managed to manipulate his master and then kill the supposed unkillable. Then created a major lie to seduce the Jedi's brightest Star Anakin Skywalker.
What was that lie? Palpatine knew everything about Anakin including his secret wedding to Padme, and he knew that Anakin dreaded losing her to death, so in the opera house he weaved a tail of a Sith Lord who was a master over death. "He was so powerful that he could save the people that he cared about from dying". Later after Anakin's fall, Palpatine admitted that he had lied about knowing this secret but if they worked together they could discover that secret, knowing that it was unlikely that Padme would be involved living or dead in Anakin's life to make it matter.
In the Plageuis book, while Plagueis became very powerful in manipulating the Midi-Clorians to the point where he could heal his own injuries, he could kill and bring back other life forms but not himself.
So what would it wreck the other movies.
Because if you look at the prequels, Sidious used his supreme fore site and power in the force to manipulate everything, he didn't make a lot of mistakes to the end, and his only mistake was being over confident, he refused to believe that Vader could possibly betray the Dark Side.
The EU did a bloody good job of making Sidious a bit of a schmuck, the biggest part of Sidious' plan with the execution of order 66 which lead to the destruction of the Jedi order, with the EU, it seemed that a major number of Jedi survived the execution of the Grand Plan of the Sith. Combine this with the betrayal by Vader, then add on that a major component of Sidious' rise which was the betrayal and masterful killing of his former master the supposedly unkillable Plageuis and Palpatine goes from a great villain to a lucky and sloppy villain.
On top of that if you look at season 6 of TCW wars Palpatine realized that Darth Maul had re-emerged as a Sith and managed to track him down as a rival and dispose of him and his brother. Because of Palpatines peerless abilty to peer through the Force and have visions, I have severe doubts that Plageuis as a major threat would be able to rise and exist as a Dark Side universe without Plageuis knowing about it. If this did indeed happen, then you have to question one of Sidious' major powers which was being able to view the currents of the Force and have visions.
Ok, I've said my peace on that, in this world it seems logical to look at Plageuis' physical appearance and Snokes appearance and see them at all similar. Now this could be a retcon away from Plageuis being a Muun and being something else. But again I have trouble believing that Abrams would make a major change to a character in the Star Wars universe Canon or not.
Is Snoke powerful in the Force? Is he a Sith?
If you go by physical characteristics, Snoke isn't a Sith for one key reason. Every Sith in Canon from Maul to Anakin to Sidious have had gold rimmed eyes, the only exception was Dooku who had his normal eyes. I tend to think that was because Dooku unlike the others wasn't a creature driven by Anger and Rage, he was driven to the Dark Side by ideology, but he was too honorable and wasn't in a constant state of anger and fear and hatred. He truly believed that he was a force of reformation of the Jedi order and the galaxy and the force.
With Snoke his eyes appeared to be pure black, but it was difficult to see in the holograms. Now in the whole Star Wars universe and its not Canon any longer, the only Dark Lord with purely black eyes was Tenebrous who later became Vitiate the Sith Emperor in the Old Republic, but he was a creature of pure dark energy in the end.
The other things that have me wondering.
Kylo Ren called him Supreme Commander Snoke. Now Kylo was eagerly following the path of his grandfather, and one of the biggest things was that Vader declared allegance to the brother hood of the Sith Order and a Sith Lord named Darth Sidious. Wouldn't it make sense that Snoke if he was a Sith Lord would have said to Ben Solo that he was a Sith Lord, the former master of Sidious and that he could lead Ben Solo to the type of power that Vader had. Wouldn't Kylo want to confirm that he was following Vader into the Sith order?
Also I have to wonder if all of the Knights of Ren were dark side users, because Plagueis was a Bannite Sith and part of the order founded by Darth Bane thousands of years ago (And Bane is still Canon) why would Plagueis allow for multiple Dark side adepts especially after being betrayed by Sidious, Plagueis himself even said Treachery was a large part in being a Sith Lord.
When Han and Leia talked about Ben's seduction, they made it sound like Snoke was close to the family and out in the open in his relationship with Ben. Does this mean that Snoke was portrayed as a Jedi, as a family confident at some point? But I doubt that if Snoke was a major part of the First Order or the fallen Empire that he would have that access to a Skywalker as part of the New Republic or Resistance. It makes me feel like Snoke at some point betrayed the Solo's and Skywalker.
So who is Snoke?
I know this is a sellout by me, but I just think that Plagueis is too easy and a bad choice, and it doesn't make sense unless Abrams is really prepared to cripple Palpatines rise to power and power as the Emperor.
So I have some theories.
He's a former Inquisitor, or the Grand Inquisitor from Rebels. This wouldn't be a bad thing as he is a Canon character and his legend was that he was active during the Clone Wars and was trained by Vader and Palpatine in the Dark Side, though he was limited in his training. From a physical perspective he would have had the severe type of injuries based on his battle with Kaanan in season one and his fall into the ship reactor. Even if you look at the manner of dress between Snoke and the Inquisitor there are similarities in their uniforms. Also the title Supreme Commander would make sense as an ascension from Grand Inquisitor. Also The Inquisitor would have known a great deal about Vader who was his master, it makes the seduction of a confused young boy who wants to follow in his fathers footsteps easier
Ok another theory that I heard was that Snoke was Darth Bane. I like this theory from the Standpoint that Bane by all descriptions would physically match up with Snoke as Bane was described as a physically imposing male and was extremely powerful in the Force. It would also explain the ancient part of Snoke. But I'm not sure if it would make sense unless what we're seeing wasn't a hologram but a ghost, and I don't think that could happen because Snoke seems to be willing to have people bought to him personally.
Could Snoke be a former Jedi who survived order 66? I doubt it Canon wise it would again poop on Sidious, and I personally don't want to see that happen.
So to me, who is Snoke? I think he's someone new, I think that he's a being that helped with the formation of the New Republic, or the New Jedi Order and infiltrated it and destroyed it and Seduced Ben Solo. I think his scars and burns came from a confrontation with Luke Skywalker after the fact, and then he went on to found the First Order which rose from the ashes of the Empire.
But I think that he's a new villain, and not something that we're going to be familiar with or someone that was in the background of the Clone Wars.
Sorry not much of an answer, but my greatest hope is that he's not Plageuis.
