[Hammock Parties]

So here's what's really interesting to me now...

Spoiler!

Was Snoke just a complete red herring? Because other than being a guy at the academy who pushed Kylo to the dark side, and a generic evil bad guy leader, he now seems completely unimportant.

He's like a discount Emperor who's backstory is pretty meaningless at this point.

It's either that or JJ had some grand design for him and Rian convinced the Lucasfilm/Disney brass it would serve the story better if he were offed.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed that the most powerful force user in the galaxy isn't going to have a big deus ex machina showdown with someone now. I really liked him when he was on screen.

What I actually wanted to happen was the force vampire thing to be partially true, but that he needed a being of immense/comparative power to fully regenerate, and that is why he wanted to find Skywalker so badly. Luke was going to be captured at the end of this one, setting up IX, where our heroes have to rescue The Last Jedi before Snoke can regenerate fully.