Could this Star Wars episode VIII 'leak' reveal a terrible secret about Luke Skywalker?
Forget Rey’s parents – this is the family tree mystery we want to solve
Another day, another bizarre Star Wars theory about Supreme Leader Snoke. Just yesterday we were debating the merits of an idea that the Force Awakens Big Bad was a secret return for bounty hunter Boba Fett (spoiler alert, probably not), and now there’s another rumour doing the rounds about Andy Serkis's villain and his connection to the series’ main characters.
This rumour comes in the form of a supposed script leak uploaded to YouTube by Star Wars Theory, but considering it doesn’t sound like any script we’ve read before (it’s in the past tense, which is unusual) and more resembles some sort of fan fiction we’re going to treat it as just a theory.
Possible (though slightly unlikely) spoilers after the jump…
In the script, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) approaches Snoke after he has captured Rey (Daisy Ridley), only for the Dark Side master to reveal a shocking truth to the Jedi Knight – he the father of Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, making him Luke’s grandfather. Well, sort of.
Originally in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, it was established that Anakin’s mother Shmi had conceived her son without any father, leading some Jedi to conclude that the Force itself had fathered Anakin – but according to the 'script', it was actually the powers of Snoke that marshalled the Force to deliberately create the future Vader. So while that wouldn’t technically make him the biological father of Anakin, he'd be the closest thing to it.
Interestingly, this sort of thing has been hinted at in the Star Wars films before. In Revenge of the Sith, Ian McDiarmid’s Palpatine tells Anakin (Hayden Christensen) that the Force could be used to bring life (see below), which some fans took as a hint that the Emperor himself was responsible for his Apprentice’s birth. So it isn’t too big a leap to imagine Snoke fulfilling that role instead.
Also, this doesn’t rule out the rather popular theory that Snoke is secretly Palpatine’s old master Darth Plagueis, the Sith Lord who supposedly mastered life and death with the Force and was said to have been killed by his apprentice in his later years.
So yes, this leak is eminently possible. But what does Star Wars episode VIII director Rian Johnson have to say about this kind of theorizing?
Ah. Well, maybe he just didn’t see this one yet. That’s what we’re telling ourselves anyway...
Star Wars: Episode VIII will be released on 15th December 2017
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
