Musings about the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy and Concepts from Various Anime and Manga
(Things that probably won't happen but are fun to write about—I need to practice writing anyway. It gets crackier and crackier with each chapter.)
Back to Naruto
I can't help but return to Naruto because of the seemingly many parallels it has with the new Star Wars trilogy. In an earlier chapter, I mentioned that Kylo Ren/Ben Solo can be compared to Sasuke while Rey can be compared to Naruto. Well this time, I'm going to stretch a bit and say that Snoke can be compared to one of the anime and manga's early villains, Orochimaru.
During the early days of Naruto, before all of those awful filler episodes and when I was still a fan of its anime, I was made to believe that Orochimaru was the big bad guy of the story. He orchestrated a series of events that led to the invasion of Konoha, the powerful ninja village that the titular character Naruto was a part of. Orochimaru killed his teacher and one of Naruto's beloved mentors, the Sandaime Hokage, leader of Konoha village. He seduced Sasuke, Naruto's best friend and team mate with promises of power if only Sasuke would join Orochimaru. In reality, Orochimaru's aim was to train Sasuke to become a powerful ninja so that when the time was right, Orochimaru would possess Sasuke and take over the younger ninja's body.
After a time skip, in which I was no longer watching the anime anymore, and just reading the manga, we find out that Sasuke has indeed grown but in my mind, he was not that powerful yet. So it was sort of a surprise that he was able to defeat Orochimaru in the fight that took place when Orochimaru tried to possess Sasuke. The in-story explanation for this is that although Orochimaru was more intelligent and well versed in esoteric ninja techniques than Sasuke, he was already physically weak during the time of his and Sasuke's fight, and probably too proud to realize that Sasuke could see that. So even if the older, creepy ninja was able to carry out his possession, Sasuke was able to squash Orochimaru's consciousness and retain control over his body. After that trial, Sasuke later went on his merry way to fulfill his dream to kill his brother. And boy, did that turn out well.
From then on, the story of Naruto became more and more convoluted. Orochimaru somehow managed to reappear because his obsessed assistant named Kabuto managed to inject himself with Orochimaru's DNA. Orochimaru was able to take over Kabuto's body through that. But he never became a big bad villain anymore, which leads us to the out-of-story explanation as to why Orochimaru had been defeated easily. He was actually a minor bad guy when compared to the oh-so-many bigger fish in the ocean of villains in Naruto. However, I'm not going to go into them anymore because I don't think the story group behind the new Star Wars trilogy can possibly introduce new "big bads" if it wants to conclude the story in Episode IX.
So how does my discussion of Orochimaru tie up to Episode IX's possible story? Well what if Snoke was like Orochimaru? What if he seduced Ben Solo to the Dark Side because his true aim was to possess Ben's body when the time was right? But that didn't happen because even if he did possess some impressive Force powers and presumably more knowledge about the Dark Side than Kylo Ren, he definitely looked weak and ill plus he was too caught up in his hubris to realize that his apprentice somehow had a hidden deviousness inside of him.
With Snoke's death, Kylo Ren now becomes the Supreme Leader of the First Order which is now the ruling body of the galaxy. While it was never specified what exactly it is that Darth Vader started that Kylo Ren wants to finish, everyone assumes that it is to rule the whole galaxy. Now that Kylo Ren has achieved this dream and finds that it's actually meaningless, he is now on his way to either 1) delving into darkness or 2) turning back to the light. But there is a third option: delving more into darkness before eventually turning back to the light, just like what happened with Sasuke.
What if Snoke really isn't as gone as we suppose he is? What if he manages to hide a fail-safe, a person he can alternately possess, and that person turns out to be his obsessed servant, Hux? Hux will induce Kylo Ren to defect and form a "third party" to what was initially a fight between the Resistance and the First Order. This third party can be Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren. However, Hux and the First Order will continue to grow in power and might so that the only way to defeat it is for the Resistance and the Knights of Ren to form a truce and team up to defeat the First Order. This is, after all, me keeping in line with the Naruto parallels, wherein the only way to defeat the ultimate, crazy, big bad villain at the very end of the manga was through the cooperation of Sasuke and Naruto.
Anyway, even without the fantastic possession angle, Hux can turn out to be a legitimately fearsome foe given what we have seen of him in The Force Awakens and what the tie-in novels say about him. Someone has written about Hux being the true big bad. I admire the author of that piece because she or he used The Hunger Games trilogy as a gauge to assess what could possibly happen in Episode IX.
What happens afterwards can go so many ways. The Last Jedi really had some romantic undertones between Rey and Ben that I wish more people would just recognize even if they don't agree with Episode IX having an ending ala Beauty and the Beast. Because even if the two characters were initially dangerously attracted to each other, it doesn't mean that they have to end up together. You could have an ending like The Phantom of the Opera where Ben lets Rey go to be happy with another guy. I personally want to have an ending like V for Vendetta, where the masked V has fallen in love with Evie but her experiences with him has have toned down whatever romantic feelings she may have had for him. Instead these experiences helped her move on to become a stronger person who will finish what V started after he dies in his heroic last stand. Or, just to keep in line with my Naruto comparison, it could possibly end up just like how I crackingly discussed stuff in my previous Naruto essay. We also could be getting an "unresolved" end in order to have another trilogy without the shadow of Han, Leia, Luke and Vader, just Rey, Ben and the new characters. My golly, I hope that the latter does not happen.