Snoke's Origins Revealed In New 'Star Wars' Book?

Supreme Leader Snoke in Star Wars: The Force Awakens

By Peter ScirettaFeb. 21, 2017 11:00 am EST

Star Wars: the Force Awakens introduced Supreme Leader Snoke to Star Wars canon, and over a year later, we still don't know much about this mysterious figure. The new book Star Wars Aftermath: Empire's End might give us some new information on the inexplicable power behind the First Order. Hit the jump to learn more about how Empire's End may reveal Snoke's origins.Chuck Wendig's Star Wars Aftermath: Empire's End was released in stores today (you can buy it now for around $17 on Amazon), and all of this new speculation is derived from information contained within that book. So if you don't want to be spoiled on that novel, this is your chance to click away.

The nice guys at Star Wars Explained compiled all of this in a video, which you can watch below.

The Aftermath book series seems to have been slowly teasing information that could tie directly into Supreme Leader Snoke's backstory. Let's run down the highlights:

In the first book, Star Wars: Aftermath, Imperial advisor Yupe Tashu says that Palpatine believed the power of the dark side came from somewhere in the Unknown Regions. Laboratories and communication stations were constructed at the edges of the galaxy, seeking the source of the dark side.

In the second book of the series, Aftermath: Life Debt, we were told that one of those stations was on Jakku, but it wasn't constructed and instead found and unburied.

In the third and final book in the series, Aftermath: Empire's End, we discover that the station on Jakku was originally part of a contingency plan should the Emperor ever fall, but later became an obsession of the Sith master.

This station housed ancient computers used to chart the Unknown Regions. Palpatine spent decades sending beacons, droids, and people into uncharted space, looking for the source of the dark side and most of them were lost in the journey. Sometime before the Battle of Endor (at the end of Return of the Jedi), navigational coordinates were established that supposedly led deep into the unknown territory, possibly even into an entirely new galaxy.

In the instance of his death, the Emperor wanted to destroy the Empire that failed to protect him. This was originally the purpose of the information on the buried Jakku station. The coordinates would supposedly allow a select few of the Emperor's loyal followers to venture into a new galaxy to start anew.

But something happened. Palpatine began receiving a signal from the area, something only he could feel. Not even his apprentice, Darth Vader, had the power to sense it. Palpatine became convinced that something out there was calling to him from the deep unknown. Maybe it could be the origin of the Force, or some darker malevolent substance. The Emperor wanted to take an expedition to the coordinates, but was killed before he could make the journey. Palpatine was not the only being to receive visions of the dark side, as the book revealed that every member of the group known as the Acolytes of the Beyond began having dreams and visions of Sith, both ancient and recent.

Star Wars Explained theorizes that the Empire's exploration into the Unknown Regions awoke something ancient and powerful, possibly even Supreme Leader Snoke himself. They speculate that a being found the literal source of the dark side and had chosen to stay there, somewhere, perhaps in an entirely different galaxy. If that is the case, why did Snoke begin to send visions to particular beings?

The novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens mentioned that Snoke watched the Empire rise and fall. So if he was out there this whole time watching, what caused him to reach out? Did he see the incoming threat to the dark side of the Force? With the introduction of Luke Skywalker to Obi-Wan Kenobi, maybe he foresaw the danger the young Jedi would bring to the dark side? Perhaps that's why he didn't send visions to Luke's father, Darth Vader.

So what do you think? Is the Aftermath book series teasing us with some details of Snoke's origins or is this all leading to something else entirely? Recently, I've become very disillusioned with the connectivity of the new Star Wars canon. It was once pitched that the story would be told over multiple platforms, but so far I don't feel fans have been rewarded from many of the ancillary story connections. For the most part, the books, games and TV shows tend to fill in the details after the fact rather than hint or set up details for future movies.

So it's my cynical position that this backstory is setting up something that will be explored in future books, something that we will likely not see in the movies at all. And if that is the case, I think fans will be extremely disappointed.