Star Wars: Domhnall Gleeson Expected Hux to Die in ‘The Last Jedi’

The new Star Wars trilogy seemed to be taking a similar approach as the original films when it came to the villains — until Rian Johnson flipped everything on its head in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Actor Domhnall Gleeson recently appeared on MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast where he revealed that he was surprised his character General Hux made it out of the new film unscathed.

“I’ll be honest, I was very surprised that [General Hux] survived,” Gleeson said. “I kind of imagined myself getting blown up in a ship pretty early on.”

Gleeson seemed taken off guard by the dramatic moment in which Supreme Leader Snoke was taken out by his apprentice, which lead to the Hux discovering the chaos after Rey escaped.

“There’s also this moment when [Kylo] Ren is on the ground, and it looks like maybe I’ll finish him. It’s like, what state would the franchise be in if Snoke and Ren are gone? And it’s just Hux going right. Can you imagine how annoyed people would’ve been?”

Writer and director Johnson has spoken at length about his decision to kill off Snoke in the new movie, positioning Kylo Ren in a way that fans never got to see Darth Vader in the original trilogy. The mystery of Snoke’s rise to power in the First Order was unimportant.

“A lot of things that ended up taking hold in the fan community in terms of who is Snoke, who are Rey’s parents, and the fever pitch that those rose to, I obviously knew those were questions you had coming out of Force Awakens, but I didn’t have the weight of the fan expectation of what the payoff of those questions would be,” said Johnson on the /Film podcast. “Which I think was a good thing.”

Star Andy Serkis, who portrays Snoke in the Star Wars saga, also revealed how he felt about a possible resurrection.

“Look, it’s Star Wars, so you never know how life, or whether life can be come back to or not. Whether you can be resuscitated or brought back,” Serkis said. “I was shocked. Dramatically, it felt absolutely right for that moment in the film, so I didn’t question it. I just think it’s a very, very important scene, so I didn’t question it. But I do, I know it’s left fans feeling like, that they were really searching for something there. And what I’m saying is, who knows?”

At least Gleeson’s character is likely to return, alongside director J.J. Abrams, in Episode IX.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is now playing in theaters.