The Episode VIII and Rebels Connection
Part of Disney’s marketing strategy for Star Wars has been to create transmedia content to unify its ever-growing canon. That is to say, stories told in one medium will be enhanced by those told in another, including the films. And it looks like Star Wars Rebels may have laid the seeds for not one major character from the sequel trilogy — the Grand Inquisitor as seen above — but a pair of familiar faces. After the jump, we tell all.
There’s a reason Disney/Lucasfilm is pushing Rebels so hard, and that’s because it holds secrets to what will come in future films. As it turns out, a source close to the Lucasfilm Story Group who calls himself Martin Matthews has let us in on this little secret. As it turns out Snoke is indeed the Grand Inquisitor who was shown falling to his death at the end of the Rebels Season 1 finale. How did he survive the explosion? “Well that’s a question for another time,” said Matthews all Maz Kanata-y. But Matthews did let us in on another bit of information.
Actor Benicio Del Toro will be portraying an elder version of Rebel’s Ezra Bridger. Will he be good or bad? We don’t know but we can say we are 79% sure this is accurate. After the clip from the Season 2 mid-season trailer showing Ezra holding a crossguard lightsaber, like the one wielded by Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens, we can confirm that he will be a Knight of Ren.
But there is yet another connection! The Phantom Menace‘s Darth Maul, now going by the moniker “Old Master” is the founder of the Knights of Ren and created this “Dark Jedi” order as a way to get to his former master Darth Sidious and kill him. But Luke Skywalker beat him to it. At that point, the Old Master and new apprentice Ezra Bridger began forming the Knights from former followers of his regime on Mandalore, which explains why the Knights of Ren look similar to Mandalorian masks made famous by bounty hunter Boba Fett.
So where does the Inquisitor/Snoke come into play? Well the Inquisitor, whose real name is Snoke, went to Maul and earned his trust, only to kill the Zabrack in his sleep — a trick he learned after hearing the tale of Darth Plagueis. Ezra bowed to Snoke as the new leader of the Knights and placed his trust in him as his new master. Eventually Ezra saw the error of following the Knights of Ren and eventually left the order, bringing us to Snoke meeting Ben Solo for the first time. Ezra tries to warn Luke and his Jedi of this new threat but Luke brushed it off as he had not sensed any Dark Side presence in the Galaxy since the death of Emperor Palpatine.
Ezra leaves Luke only for Ben to turn on his fellow students and kill them all, becoming Kylo Ren. Ezra tells Luke “I told you so,” and they both venture off to locate the old Jedi temples to learn more of the light side of the Force in order to come back and defeat Snoke once and for all. Ezra was actually on Ahch-To with Luke at the time Rey finds him at the end of The Force Awakens.
Why wasn’t he on the cliff with Luke? Well Ezra had just went Force cliff-jumping and Luke had watched him take his plunge — don’t worry he didn’t die or anything. Cliff-jumping on Ahch-To was a popular Jedi sport at the time of the ancient Force users.
So there you have it fake believers! Have something to say about our findings? Let us know in the comments below or on our new messageboard; Faking Fandom Forums. See you there!
