Alien invasion,is this the shocking truth?

I think the complaint about the Vong being outside of the Force is... well, it's kind of the point, isn't it?

Star Wars fans can be a little bit defensive of what they love, especially when it comes to Jedi lore, so I get the frustration, but I really think that the intent was totally for them being outside of the Force to feel wrong. To feel alien. It wasn't just to make them more powerful- it was to define them as truly being an "other".

And honestly, it makes sense why. In a series that already has almost countless "alien" variants, it's kind of difficult to make one that truly feels foreign, yet still sentient. I guess they could have taken a somewhat Lovecraftian route and made beings of unimaginable shape and size, but that's a sort of different genre- monsters vs invasions.

But by making them outside of the Force- the one thing that, as far as anyone knew, bound the galaxy together- the Vong really were something else. Even though their appearance looked like a Romulan mated with a Geonosian, they were something new and something other. And that was kind of important for their story.

 

While I buy the idea of an outside alien invasion because of the hints being put forth so far in the novels I don't think we will get far comparing it to the Vong. Love em or hate em the YV Plotline is very controversial and outside of the broad stroke idea of an attack from far outsiders I don't think the current creative brain trust at LFL wants to draw too many comparisons to that story.

 

Possibly.

On the other hand, a race seemingly unaffected by the Force could add to its mystery too, as long as its handled well.

As long as they steer away from any prescriptive diagnosis of why the Force doesn't affect the Vong (or possibly Snoke) it could have potential.

Stick to the mystical stuff- we don't need to hear about someone having a lack of midichlorians, the mystery needs to be that: mystery.

 

While I do think Snoke is from the Unknown regions based on the canonical literature that we currently have I don't think he is from another galaxy.

• The emperor felt a dark force in the unknown regions, a force that he thought was the source of his power
• Snoke has been around a long time, long enough to see the rise and fall of the empire.
• Thrawn does mention a threat to the Chiss in the Unknown regions but does not say they it is from another galaxy.

I honestly don't want just another fight for who will control the galaxy. I don't want Snoke to just be some hidden Sith Master who was waiting for just the right moment to take over the galaxy. The emperor did that and I don't want just another Emperor Palpatine. I really hope they go deeper.

 

I do wonder- is Snoke of the race that is the threat Thrawn fears? Or is he THE threat?

 

It was George Lucas himself that said that the one that should die was Anakin. They were planing to kill Jacen at the end of the story but Lucas didn't like the idea and told them to make Anakin bite the dust instead. I have always wondered why not let Jacen die instead of turning him into the series hero if they were just going to let him fall to the Dark Side in another story arc and kill him off anyway.

 

In a world I want to live in that would be one of the ending scenes of The Last Jedi causing our heroes to scatter across the galaxy

 

If I remember correctly, I think the reason Lucas want Anakin killed was because he thought It may be confusing to have two Anakins. So they killed Anakin Solo. Believe Steve Stansweet told it when you could ask him questions on the Star Wars website years ago.

 

So that's actually very true.

 

Yeah I lost interest with Jacen turning.

 

Me too. I didn't read any other NJO novels after that.

 

Maybe. However, Palpatine didn't seem to be afraid of the dark presence he felt in the unknown regions. That could mean that the dark presence (what many including myself believe to be Snoke) was not the same as the threat Thrawn spoke of or he was to cocky to be afraid (he wasn't afraid of the rebellion and they won the war and Vader killed him).

I just keep wondering what brought Snoke out of the shadows.

• We know Snoke has been around a very long time, he saw the fall of the Republic and the rise and fall of the empire.
• For thousands of years the Jedi have been fighting only with light and the Sith only with darkness, i.e. the Jedi and Sith have been fighting each other with only one side of a coin.
• So both the Sith and the Jedi represent an imbalanced use of the force
• Snoke is an ancient being (not a Sith, which we have been told he is not) who represents the original use fo the balanced forced for evil. That's why the Emperor thinks he feels the source of his power in the unknown regions. He is sensing the use of the balanced force when he is only using one side of it.
• Luke in his search for Jedi artifacts finds ancient texts the give a history of what the first force users originally intended, using the balanced force for good.
• Snoke discovers that Luke has found these texts and realizes that Luke will soon represent the only real threat to him especially if he trains more force users to use the balanced force for good. This bring Snoke out of hiding and he makes his move against Luke and destroys the Jedi Academy (obviously more complicated because he also turned Ben Solo and maybe others to his side in the process)
• Unfortunately for Snoke, Luke gets away with the ancient texts
• Snoke knows Rey will go to Luke and fears that Luke will train her to use the balanced force and if he does the two of them will be a huge threat
• In response Snoke decides to train Kylo to use the whole force, that's why he says in TFA bring Kylo to me it's time to finish his training.

 

It's interesting, growing up with Star Wars I naturally created an elaborate backstory for where the Skywalkers came from and what the Clone War was. At the same time, I often imagined where Luke would venture beyond the events of Return of the Jedi; neither the EU nor the prequels accommodated my fiction, and there was inherently disappointment. I think that's true for any fan, though, we spend so much time immersed in this world that we define this universe, and each of us created a prequel trilogy and what would become the sequel trilogy. So, for me, it was easy to abandon the EU, even though I loved some of it, I really disliked the NJO series and how it developed this universe and the Skywalkers role in it.

Snoke, to me, represents the Far Outsider concept used at its best; he is the singular Far Outsider, perhaps representing an ancient order of Force wielders, long undead, tampering with the very fabric of life, and expounding on the concepts and themes of life, death, and rebirth that permeate the Star Wars Saga; he would be the natural evolution of that theme; aristocratic and powerful, obsessed with the possessions and nature of the living world and all it inhabits. Not an absence in the Force like the Vong, but a powerful dark wound that even Palpatine could sense.

An extra-galactic threat is highly unnecessary, but a threat from the literal unknown plays into the space fantasy concept Lucas created Star Wars as.