Director Rian Johnson has confirmed that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will not fully reveal Snoke's backstory. Star Wars is known for having some memorable and menacing villains in the past, and with a new trilogy lined up for Lucasfilm, fans have been wondering who will take up that mantle. Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) was the prominent villain in The Force Awakens, but that film also laid the foundation for Snoke (Andy Serkis). While only his holographic version was shown, he immediately became one of the film's biggest points of intrigue.

Theories have continued to pop up over the last year and a half about who Snoke could be, with many hypothesizing he is someone fans have met before. With very little details to go on so far, the hope has been that The Last Jedi will give us the reveal of his full history and possible connection to the franchise. If you were among those hoping for such a reveal, hope no longer.

EW spoke to Johnson as part of their extensive coverage on The Last Jedi for their upcoming issue - featuring Rey and Luke on the cover - and asked about Snoke. While we will get to see more of him and learn a little bit about Kylo's mentor, Johnson says audiences won't get to know everything about Star Wars' latest villain:

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.

Johnson is not the first person to compare Snoke's role in this trilogy to the Emperor. Kylo is clearly the "new" Darth Vader - going as far as to mirror his look after his grandfather - which makes Snoke the "new" Emperor. Hopefully, this comparison is not an indication to his screen time in the second installment of a trilogy, as Palpatine had only a small role in Empire Strikes Back.

Johnson went on to say that "we’ll learn exactly as much about Snoke as we need to" over the course of The Last Jedi. If he does have a minor role to play, fans will have to wait for Episode 9 or any canon novels/comics to flesh out Snoke's story. At the very least, these statements indicate that fans will learn more about Snoke in The Last Jedi, but still leave some threads unanswered for director Colin Trevorrow to answer in 2019.

What we do know about Snoke for the time being is he is mysteriously damaged but likes to keep an upper class look to his wardrobe. He is still a mystery to the larger galaxy but the continued rise of The First Order should spread awareness of him quickly. With Kylo called back to him to finish his training, he must have some Force abilities of his own. As you can see, The Last Jedi should give plenty of intriguing details about him, but his entire backstory will be saved for another day and film.

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Source: EW

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