With the unsurprisingly controversial release of Star Wars lore.
Frankly, there were no truly great villains in this trilogy. The ones that had promise were underserved by the story and the ones that didn’t have promise have been crammed down the audience’s throats for the past four years. So, we’ll be ranking all the villains in the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
Supreme Leader Snoke
Despite the promise of having Andy Serkis in a motion-capture performance, Supreme Leader Snoke was nothing more than a Palpatine rip-off. He was the guy on the throne who manipulated a Skywalker over to the dark side of the Force and then used him to build an evil empire.
When Snoke was retconned as one of Palpatine’s creations in The Rise of Skywalker and not mentioned again following the movie’s opening two minutes, no one batted an eye. J.J. Abrams made The Force Awakens that Rian Johnson couldn’t possibly live up to, so Johnson went the other way and killed off Snoke in unceremonious fashion. The character was a creative failure.
DJ
From his very first appearance in The Last Jedi, Benicio del Toro’s technically unnamed “slicer” character – who still has a name, DJ (“Don’t ”) – telegraphed to Finn and Rose that he was going to betray them. He made it very clear that he doesn’t take sides in political conflicts and the only reason he was getting involved at all was for money.
As soon as the First Order offered DJ a better deal, he took it and sold out Finn and Rose. The two were surprised by this ideological switch, for God knows what reason, but the audience certainly wasn’t.
General Hux
It wouldn’t be a Star Wars movie without a sniveling bureaucrat who challenges the Sith-powered villain and gets continually put in his place. Unfortunately, General Hux was just the worst. His arc ended with becoming a spy to help the Resistance bring down the First Order, which didn’t feel like a natural progression for his character at all.
Domhnall Gleeson is a very talented actor – as shown in Ex Machina, mother!, and the Black Mirror episode “Be Right Back” – but there was no way of making Hux likable. He was sort of the Grand Moff Tarkin of this new trilogy, but where Peter Cushing played a villain that you love to hate, Gleeson just played a villain that you hate.
Allegiant General Pryde
Richard E. Grant’s character from The Rise of Skywalker, Allegiant General Pryde, gets bonus points for killing General Hux. His whole role in the plot was figuring out that Hux was the spy who gave away information to the Resistance and then shooting him dead on the spot.
He doesn’t have a lot to do in the movie – and, frankly, his existence at all in a movie jam-packed with so much plot material is barely justified – but thanks to Grant’s typically engaging performance, Pryde is fascinating when he is on-screen. When he got blasted out of his ship, it was pretty shocking.
Baton-wielding Stormtrooper
This character only has a minor role in The Force Awakens, but it was easily one of the most awesome moments in the whole movie. The Stormtroopers had a chip on their shoulder when it came to Finn, because from their perspective, he was a cowardly deserter who abandoned his post.
When he confronted a Stormtrooper outside Maz Kanata’s castle on Takodana, he ignited his newly acquired lightsaber – and the Stormtrooper promptly responded by getting out an electrified baton. The fight was a riveting sequence, and this new weapon was one of the sequel trilogy’s best additions to the Stormtroopers’ arsenal.
Kylo Ren
There was a terrific character buried somewhere in Ben Solo, and if either J.J. Abrams or Rian Johnson had been in charge of the sequel trilogy singlehandedly, they could’ve done something really interesting with his journey. However, switching hands between the two filmmakers caused Kylo Ren’s arc to come off as muddled and directionless.
The need to create a new masked villain in the mold of Darth Vader prevented Ben from becoming a truly unique character. His redemption at the end of The Rise of Skywalker could’ve been a powerful moment, but it didn’t feel earned, because the build-up was too jumbled. And the kiss ruined it.
Captain Phasma
Gwendoline Christie’s character Captain Phasma showed real promise. She was a badass with an ice-cold demeanor and a personal vendetta against one of the heroes (Finn, for deserting her squadron). When she was first revealed in the lead up to The Force Awakens’ release, Star Wars fans speculated that Phasma would be the Boba Fett of this new trilogy, and that turned out to be more accurate than those fans would’ve liked.
Just like Fett, she was introduced as the trilogy’s coolest villain in one movie and then given a really underwhelming death scene in the next one. What we did see of Phasma – before she was killed off with that cheesy “chrome-dome” line – was thrilling.
Emperor Palpatine
Having already been the best villain in the original and prequel trilogies, Emperor Palpatine returned in The Rise of Skywalker in an attempt to win back the love and respect of scorned fans who hated The Last Jedi. Palpatine’s return negated the victory of the Rebel Alliance and the redemption of Anakin Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, but Ian McDiarmid continued to play the role brilliantly.
And he was undeniably one of the best parts of The Rise of Skywalker. Even the revelation that Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter sort of worked, because it tied the whole saga together and made the sequel trilogy feel necessary and not just the shameless cash-grab it was.
