Could Ezra Bridger on Star Wars Rebels end up being Supreme Leader Snoke?

This is your spoiler warning as I intend to talk about all of the events in Wednesday night's Star Wars Rebels season finale: Twilight of the Apprentice.

There is so much to say about the second season finale of Star Wars Rebels that I hardly know where to begin. Called "Twilight of the Apprentice" it may be thus named because we've just seen the swan song of one of my favorite characters: Ahsoka Tano (Anakin Skywalker's one and only padawan), which has been an epic seven-year arc if you consider the character was created in The Clone Wars with the sole intent that there would be a showdown with Darth Vader at some point in a blazing lightsaber battle to the death.

The ambiguous outcome/dream sequence following the lightsaber battle on a Sith Temple on Malachor has led the online community to believe that Ahsoka may not be dead. However, Rebels is a story that has always seemed to me to be about Kanan and Ezra, so I doubt we will see much of Tano in the future. I'd like to think that she survived, but what better way to end a character than with the biggest bad of all taking them out. It's a little sad but also elegant in a way.

The other thing that came as a real surprise to me was the appearance of Darth Maul again. Now going by Maul (how he survived a lightning storm battle with Emperor Palpatine is beyond me, but then again, this is the same guy that survived being cut in half by Qui Gon). Maul lured Ezra to the Dark Side so easily it wasn't even funny. I like to think that it was written this way, because Star Wars Rebels is a television show on the Disney channel with an audience (target group) around thirteen or fourteen years old. But literally, Ezra had became fully engaged with the Dark Side of the force basically in the time it took to ride two elevators to the top of a pyramid. Enough at least that he was able to open a Sith holocron all by himself by show's end...something that only a Sith is supposed to be able to do.

This revelation leads me to conclude that (in recollection of the events we saw in episode VII) either Ezra Bridger or Darth Maul might (in fact) be Supreme Leader Snoke (whom we saw in the chair overlooking Kylo Ren in the movie). It seems fairly simple to assume Snoke could be either of these two. If Ezra Bridger were Snoke, it would explain his fascination with Luke Skywalker because he faced his dad in combat and Luke's dad destroyed his first lightsaber and basically opened his mind to the true power that the Dark Side possessed because Ezra saw him kill Ahsoka Tano. It also could be that Ezra (as Snoke) just wants to kill Luke Skywalker because he wants revenge against Vader (who happened to be Luke's dad). There was also the bit of foreshadowing when Ezra picked up a lightsaber that looked a lot like Kylo Ren's, and Maul did name Ezra "my apprentice" and kept stressing how there was always "two" in a Sith relationship (no more no less). So the path to Ezra becoming Snoke could be as easy as 1) Ezra killing Maul, and 2) then taking Kylo Ren as an apprentice at some point in the future (before the events of episode VII).

However, Snoke could also be Maul. Here's my evidence: first, the body types look eerily familiar if you contrast what we saw in episode VII to the way Maul moved in the series finale last night. As part of gaining the secret of immortality (previously known only to Darth Plagueis) I would think might also come a profound undead appearance and possibly the loss of the horns on his head? That would make him look a lot like Supreme Leader Snoke, if you could swallow that there would be those physical changes. Maul has already shown (and stated) that he no longer cares about the "Darth" title (I've never really been sure what that means). Perhaps it's a declaration similar to what Ahsoka said when she faced off against Vader and declared, "I am no Jedi." It's propagating this idea that (while the movies concern themselves with Skywalker and Yoda) there are other Force users in the galaxy that don't belong to either group as traditionally identified by the old Jedi Council. This gives leeway to walking around the statement from Yoda when he says to Luke on his deathbed, "When gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be."

And then there's the matter of the whole Sith holocron that Ezra recovered. A holocron is like a huge library/database of Force knowledge. The Jedi have them and they can be used to teach other Jedi how to manipulate the Force. I never realized that the Sith would have them too. Presumably, it's going to be filled with all sorts of Sith tricks: Force Lightning and Undead Immortality spring to mind. Perhaps the ability to stop a blaster bolt in mid flight is also included (we saw Kylo Ren do this in episode VII). The thing that's got my mind swirling is why was Asajj Ventress' voice coming out of the Holocron? It could be that they used the same voice actress for the holocron. Or it could mean that the Holocron is Dathomirian technology (think witches from the planet Dathomir) as she was raised by the Nightsisters (who employed "magick" as opposed to the Force to do any number of miraculous things).

The last thing I wanted to touch on is that Kanan is now the Star Wars version of Daredevil. Maul blinded him, which is going to have a lot of repercussions I'm sure. Maybe it will make his Force use stronger. Or perhaps it's just a nod to the original Star Wars movies that with 1) Kanan blind and 2) Ezra embracing the dark side, that Luke really is the only alternative the Jedi have with any kind of chance to take down the Emperor.

Looking forward to season three. That season two finale was pretty darn incredible.