Okay no secret I love The Last Jedi but I got inspired and I want to talk about villains and their use in the mainline Star Wars movies. Strap yourself in cause it's gonna be a lot of tweets.

The entire saga, daddy palpatine is THE main villain but he's not really present as a force in many of these movies.

In episode 1, the federation and to an extent Darth Maul are the villains but there's this weird mystery force all of this even Jedis acknowledged

Again this happens in episode 2 with I guess Dooku serving that villain role, but the movie is played out as a mystery. And episode 3, Palps is fully in control influencing Anakin to dark side and destroying the republic and the Jedi order.

(Now for the original trilogy, I will be talking about it from the perspective of release order not chronological. Meaning watching originals, then prequels, then sequels: 4-6, 1-3, 7-9)

So in OT, Palpy is the bad guy again but he doesn't show up til Empire. So in episode 4 Admiral Tarkin is the main villain: he's the one who blew up Alderaon and he wants to destroy the Rebel base. Vader plays as an agent of the dark side/empire but he's not the big baddie

So in Empire it's revealed Vader serves a master so again Vader sidesteps as main villain bc the true one pulling all the strings is the emperor (Vader is the main bad guy in episode 5 I'm talking about in general sense as a trilogy)

For episode 6 Vader and Luke duke it out in front of Palpatine, again him trying to pull strings and continue his rule and stuff. But Vader as an act of redemption, kills the emperor

Vader absolves his past since he has destroyed the most powerful evil and finally has brought balance to the galaxy (I'm not here to argue about this point that can be a different tweet thread)

Now for the SeQueLs: well well well, its big daddy palpatine pulling all the strings again if we are counting rise of Skywalker. But let's pretend we're in 2018 and episode 9 doesn't exist. Snoke, who plays as palpatine-lite, is the big bad

He's the one pulling strings in episode 7 and 8 as Hux and Kylo Ren follow Snoke's orders. Hux does order the destruction of 5 planets and Kylo Ren trying to complete his training is just watching that destruction. And at the end of 7, he loses in a duel and is embarrassed

So now we're here at TLJ, the best Star Wars movie since Empire Strikes Back. And what happens? Kylo Ren kills Snoke and there's a disturbance in the force. That force is fandom. Star Wars fans wanted to know about Snoke, his motives, what he's all about but they got livid

"Snoke was for nothing then"
"he didn't matter,"
"he wasn't that strong if Kylo killed him easily"

But Snoke basically plays the same as Palpatine in OT. They're not the main point of the trilogies. The other characters are

Obi-Wan and Anakin are what the prequels are about. Luke and Vader are what the originals are about. And Kylo and Rey are what the sequels are about.

You see, Kylo Ren is the big bad in episode 8 (and he's supposed to be for episode 9!). Kylo Ren has always wanted to finish what his granddad Vader started and he killed Snoke! He literally was in control of the entire First Order

He fulfilled his arc to be THE main villain. The foil to Rey being the main hero. Snoke was just a plot device for Kylo in the same way Palpatine was a plot device in the original trilogy for Darth Vader (the prequels are different bc they fill in the backstory)

Kylo Ren took full control of his destiny. BUT bc of fan backlash to TLJ, we got daddy palpy back as the main villain. And what's weird about his turn for 9 was that he really was at the forefront of it all compare to him pulling strings in previous trilogies

For reasons, Kylo Ren cannot be the main villain. There has to be this need for a large mysterious lurking presence that pulls the strings. We have to follow this odd path. Plus there's the "how can he redeem himself if he decides to commit genocides" aspect lol

Which I find Vader so fascinating since he killed a lot of people with his own hands and he still absolves himself at the end of episode 6.

The Last Jedi is an amazing Star Wars movie for a lot of reasons but this villain aspect was so fascinating to me. I loved this arc and this arc is something we don't typically see a lot. Vader stopped himself short of being the ruler of the galaxy and Kylo was right there

I can go on and on about villains. But it’s also funny how when we think about Star Wars movie villains, we think of these “underlings” like Vader and Kylo because they’re the ones who are at the forefront of the story