The First Order is led by Supreme Leader Snoke in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and the mysterious humanoid is quite tall, both in person and in his hologram messages. Little was known about Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but the dark side user’s origin was succinctly explained in an opening scene of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, indirectly explaining his great height and perhaps its deliberate purpose. Snoke’s holographic Force Awakens appearances supplements this explanation.
Snoke’s species, background, and even true appearance were all shrouded in mystery early on, with the Supreme Leader communicating with his underlings via a massive hologram of himself. After an unceremonious death in The Last Jedi, Snoke’s origin as a creation of Palpatine’s was shown in The Rise of Skywalker. Canon non-movie material would further elaborate that Snoke is a strand-cast (or, artificially-created humanoid) who was initially meant to house Palpatine’s consciousness, but became an unwitting proxy for him instead.
In The Force Awakens, Snoke appears as a massive hologram that, according to Andy Serkis, is about 25 feet tall. The canon sourcebook, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: The Visual Dictionary, reveals that Snoke’s true height, however, is about seven-foot-two (218 cm). Snoke likely wished to intimidate and dominate his subordinates in his hologram communications, but even in person, Snoke towered over others, which was perhaps intentional on Palpatine’s part.
Snoke was a physically frail being, despite his incredible strength in the dark side of the Force. His holographic form was gigantic, dwarfing Kylo Ren and General Hux, likely compensating for his body’s weakness. Though by no means physically weak, Emperor Palpatine similarly projected a massive hologram of his face in The Empire Strikes Back when speaking to Darth Vader, likely as a way to assert his dominance.
In person, however, Snoke still loomed large over others, at over seven feet tall. Since Snoke is a strand-cast, his height was likely deliberately determined before his creation by Palpatine and the Sith Eternal cultists. With this in mind, a tall and intimidating appearance is unsurprising for a being who was initially intended to simply house Palpatine’s spirit. Snoke’s physical frailty, however, was likely unintended.
Although Snoke was created by the Sith and became an unwitting pawn of them, he was not a Sith himself. Snoke was an unaffiliated dark side master who believed himself to be the successor of Emperor Palpatine. Fittingly, Snoke’s predetermined intimidating height and his choice to depict himself as massive via hologram messages in the Star Wars sequels were likely meant to intimidate others.
