Take this all with a whole shaker full of salt, but another Star Wars rumor is making the rounds, and it both echoes The Revenge of the Sith and ties back neatly with an admittedly-silly rumor we wrote about way back in 2015. Potential (but unlikely) spoilers ahead.
The Sunday Express claims there’s been a set leak from Episode IX (which is shooting now) regarding a major plot twist involving Domnhall Gleeson’s character, General Hux, being a traitor within the First Order.
Kylo Ren is suspicious of an individual in the First Order handing out information to the Resistance. Part of the Episode 9 storyline will have a cat and mouse element to it, similar to Revenge of the Sith where the Jedi were trying to find out who the Sith lord is — which turned out to be Palpatine. […]
General Hux is the mole inside the First Order. But why would he betray the order he loves so much? Hux is a fanatic dedicated to the aims and convictions that underpin the concept of the First Order as the only way to establish a stable galaxy. But, like any classic villain, he can only see his own aims and is blinded by his own hatred and envy of Kylo Ren. Kylo has always been driven by his personal demons but Hux is utterly committed to the First Order and his devotion allows him to justify anything as a means to a glorious end. Hux believes Kylo Ren is not a fit leader to replace the god-like Snoke. Plus he always had his eye on eventually being acknowledged as Snoke’s successor so he is also trying to undermine and bring down the new Supreme Leader so that he can step in and take control himself.
Back in 2015, a similar rumor claimed Hux was secretly Luke Skywalker’s son and was playing both sides against each other in some sort of an attempt at disarming both sides of their superweapons. This rumor proved ridiculous once Star Wars: The Force Awakens came out and showed Hux gleaning some fanatical enjoyment out of exploding five planets with a superweapon.
We also know who Hux’s father is purported to be, thanks to an in-canon Star Wars novel, Aftermath: Life Debt: the brutal Brendol Hux, who created the Stormtrooper training method his son was using in Force Awakens. Hux’s mother was a kitchen servant with whom the married Brendol was having an affair, which makes Poe Dameron’s joke at the beginning of Star Wars: The Last Jedi about needing to give Hux an urgent message “about his mother” a bigger burn than most viewers realized.
A different in-canon Star Wars novel (Phasma) revealed Hux arranged his father Brendol’s assassination in order to speed his own rise to power.
In other words, Hux is unlikely to be a secret Skywalker. On the other hand, the ginger space fascist did further his career by assassinating his own father, and he nearly killed Kylo at least once already, so it isn’t entirely far-fetched to theorize he might strategically leak information to the Resistance if he thought he could benefit. As Gleeson has said in an interview prior to Last Jedi‘s release, “[General Hux has] been pushed to a place where his position is in real jeopardy, and people make really bad decisions when they get desperate.”
We’ll see if he’s really that desperate or this is just another persistent but untrue rumor when Star Wars: Episode IX opens December 20th, 2019.
(Via The Sunday Express and Mike Zeroh)