Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo Just Debunked a Big 'Star Wars' Fan Theory

Rumors abound on the internet, and sometimes it’s tough to know among fans what is real — and what is a bunch of geeky wishful thinking, especially with something as robust and mythology-heavy as Star Wars. And though Lucasfilm generally and wisely stays mum about stories outside of its control, it’s good to have someone inside who still engages with the fans like Pablo Hidalgo. Hidalgo is the Creative Executive of the Lucasfilm Story Group, which means he’s responsible for keeping the official continuity of Disney’s official Star Wars timeline and regulating out-of-control fan theories. He’s a no bullshit kind of guy, and has quashed speculation before — when people freaked out about Luke Skywalker’s relationship to Rey all because of some comic book spaceship — and he’s back at it again on Twitter.

Star Wars fans seem adamant that there has to be something more to the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke, the Sith-friendly and Palpatine-esque puppetmaster behind the evil machinations of The Force Awakens. He’s only seen as a gigantic hologram in the first new Star Wars movie, and yet he commands the First Order’s ability to blow up multiple planets with the Death Star-on-steroids called Starkiller Base, and manipulate Kylo Ren into going so far as to kill his own father.

His origins, what his endgame is, and why he’s so much like Palpatine have Star Wars nerds fiending for more, even though all they’ll have to do is wait for director Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII to come out.

Many think Snoke is someone called Darth Plagueis, the evil Sith lord that taught Palpatine to embrace the dark side before the events of the prequels. Palpatine even relates the story of Plagueis and his apprentices betrayal to a young Anakin on the cusp of becoming Darth Vader in a scene from Revenge of the Sith, which is probably the best scene in any of the prequels.

To fans, Snoke couldn’t just be a new shadowy dude, he had to be a reincarnated Plagueis. The filmmakers behind the new Star Wars movies are trying everything they can to distance themselves from the maligned prequels, so it’s unlikely that they’d just make the biggest connection in the sequel trilogy a callback to them, and Hidalgo confirmed it on Twitter.

Palpatine, acting as a Sith apprentice, killed Plagueis, because that’s how the Sith rolls.

But Pablo, is he really, really dead? The answer is yes.

So Snoke is definitely not Plagueis since, as Hidalgo explicitly says it all in the tweet. We’re fairly certain the folks at Lucasfilm aren’t pulling a kind of Jon Snow-esque switcheroo on fans, so expect to hear about Snoke’s own backstory in the movies to come. Now all we need is for Hidalgo to get more specific about Rey’s parents.