Your ideas apart from three death stars in the sextology

Listening to the latest Force Center podcast, something was said that really struck me, and that critics of there "always being a Death Star", should hear. The repeated use of (basically) the same weapon shows the rigidity of thinking among the Empire (and First Order). The Death Star didn't work? Build a bigger one. The second one didn't work? Build a bigger one that gets its power from a sun. That doesn't work? Build a fleet of death star ships.

Well it does work as a narrative for a fatal character flaw of the Empire/First & Last Order. But it probably says more about the rigidity of the writers. They can’t come up with an original ultimate threat for the bad guys. After all, the prequels never used a Death Star or any such similar concept.

And they did have other options. Abrams said that Snoke was not a Sith after TFA. So in episode 8 or 9, Snoke could’ve decided that the Sith “rule of two” is a flaw. And the Death Stars continue to fail. So he decides to create an army of Darksiders as the ultimate threat. He creates a small prototype group of Darkside Force using warriors to start. And Kylo will head them up. They could’ve utilized the Knights of REN that way and expanded on it.

But Snoke and the Knights of Ren were just more of Abrams mystery box* he had no plans of what to do with. And when Johnson got them he ignored the Knights and he killed Snoke, and put all of his “eggs in the Kylo basket”.



*Mystery box is a plot device concept created by JJ Abrams. It involves creating many intriguing plot and character questions. Then stringing along the audience with the suspense of it. Steadily increasing the intrigue which steadily increases the audience’s investment in the plot or the character. But it is not important to ever answer those questions because it’s the questions that will hold the audience throughout the story. Not the answers. So the payoff of the answers is an unimportant (and often ignored) detail in Abrams “mystery box”.