10 Wasted Star Wars Characters That Deserved Better

Oh dear. Where do I start...

The first instalment of the modern trilogy, The Force Awakens, billed Supreme Leader Snoke as an extremely powerful figurehead of evil, shrouded in mystery. With Kylo Ren as his disciple, the relationship is a perfect parallel to that of Darth Vader and the Emperor, and an effective way of paying homage to the originals while pushing the saga in a new direction.

So, when the final film dropped the bombshell that Snoke was merely the Emperor all along, it really served to take the wind out of the character's sails.

Snoke's sudden death in The Last Jedi was unexpected enough. Despite being cut in half by Kylo Ren, many fans presumed that this wouldn't be the end of such a legendarily powerful Force user. It was, however, and from there, things only got sadder.

In the intro to The Rise of Skywalker, the Emperor's lair features a tank containing bodies identical to Snoke's, all but confirming that the being the galaxy knew as Supreme Leader Snoke was actually just a genetically engineered puppet; a shell for the Emperor to inhabit and rule the First Order from a distance.

The idea is just fundamentally flawed. It's one thing to bring back a character that was unquestionably dead, but another thing entirely to rob another dead character of all his merit by retconning him into a worthless empty vessel. Brings a tear to the eye, it really does.