Ranking Star Wars Sequel Trilogy Characters Based on Their Wasted Potential
The sequel trilogy wasn't good for many reasons, but it had the opportunity to be good. This list ranks all the characters that had the potential to be very cool but were just written or used poorly.
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Snoke
Supreme Leader Snoke is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. He served as the mysterious leader of the First Order and played a major role in the sequel trilogy. Snoke was portrayed through motion capture and voiced by Andy Serkis.
Snoke should have been the main antagonist of the Sequel Trilogy. Honestly, if they made his actual size the giant version of the hologram we saw in Episode VII, he would have been so much cooler. Imagine a lightsaber duel against a giant who has a giant lightsaber.
But they ruined him in Episode VIII, and then deleted all of his importance by making Palpatine his puppet master. Not cool, Disney.
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General Hux
General Armitage Hux is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. He was first introduced in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The character is portrayed by Irish actor Domhnall Gleeson and appears in all three films of the sequel trilogy.
Remember when Hux ordered the execution of billions of people on Starkiller Base, only to then turn around and join the side he hated simply because he hated Kylo Ren more? That was a bad choice on Disney's end. I feel they just wanted to throw a surprise spy in and chose the character everyone would suspect the least.
If they had stuck with Hux's original design as he was in Episode VII, he might have been a better character.
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Kylo Ren
Kylo Ren, also known as Ben Solo, is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. He serves the First Order and eventually becomes its Supreme Leader, with a temper as fiery as his unconventional crossguard lightsaber. Kylo Ren first appeared in the 2015 film Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens... read more
Ah yes, Kylo Ren. What a shame. A new generation "Sith" who idolizes his grandfather, Kylo Ren had a backstory that could have made him great. Sent away by his parents to train with Luke, only to wake up and see him standing over his bed with a lightsaber activated. That sounds like enough motivation to turn to the Dark Side.
But in all seriousness, Kylo Ren had a unique lightsaber and had the motivation to be different. His rage made him a very different character than Vader, which is something that I appreciate. If Disney had just committed to this character becoming "Darth Ren," he could have been a pretty good character.
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Finn
FN-2187, better known as Finn, is a character from the Star Wars franchise. He made his first appearance in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where he is introduced as a First Order stormtrooper who decides to defect after being horrified by the group's actions. Finn is portrayed by English... read more
A runaway stormtrooper, Finn had the potential to be cool, and he was a good character in Episode VII, but he got worse as the movies went on. Unless the point was that his battle with Kylo altered his mind in some way, this was a hit and a miss.
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Captain Phasma
Captain Phasma is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise, portrayed by actress Gwendoline Christie. She was introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Phasma serves as a commander in the First Order's stormtrooper forces.
The dollar-store stormtrooper equivalent of Din Djarin, Phasma is known for just showing up, doing nothing, and then dying. They sort of redeemed her character in Episode VIII with that fight against Finn, but it just wasn't enough.
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Rey
Rey is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise portrayed by British actress Daisy Ridley. She made her first appearance as the central protagonist of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Rey begins as a solitary scavenger on the desert planet Jakku, where she was abandoned as a child. Her life... read more
*sigh*
They really just looked at Luke Skywalker, copied him, but made the character worse. A Jedi abandoned on a sand planet in order to keep their location a secret from the dangerous Sith lord? Control C, Control V. Not to mention the Sith relative reveal.
Not only is Rey one of the *weakest* Jedi characters ever, but they also have no character development that makes them unique.
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Knights of Ren
What even were these characters? We first see them in Episode VII, only for them to not show up at all in Episode VIII, and then make a surprise appearance in Episode IX where they get destroyed faster than the younglings by Vader's hand.
An army of rewritten Inquisitors, they were just lazily thrown in without much design at all. So much potential gone to waste.
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Maz Kanata
Maz Kanata is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. Introduced in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, she is a computer-generated character voiced and performed through motion capture by Lupita Nyong'o. Maz is a wise alien who is more than 1,000 years old and runs a tavern on the... read more
From a figure almost as old as Yoda, we should have seen more from her character. She made a brief appearance in Episode VII, holding the Skywalker family lightsaber, and then she disappears. This character could have been used better.
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Star Wars Rebels
Star Wars Rebels is an American 3D CGI animated television series produced by Lucasfilm Animation. It begins fourteen years after Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith and five years before Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. The series follows a small group of rebels as they fight back against... read more
We all saw the Ghost in Episode IX, right? We should have had some explanation or at least something more than just a cameo. The Mandalorian sort of explains things with Zeb, but that is pretty much it.
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Rose Tico
Can someone please explain to me her importance? It would have been cool if the loss of her sister made her step up as a leader and actually do something, but all she really did in the sequels was... well, nothing. The biggest thing she did was stop Finn from destroying the cannon in Episode VIII, resulting in Luke having to step in.