Warning: spoilers for Episode 8 - The Last Jedi lie ahead.

Star Wars shocked fans last month when Snoke was unexpectedly killed off, despite online fans spending two years speculating that he would have a much larger role going forward.

The plot twist was so shocking that many now believe that all is not as it seems - with a new theory on Reddit suggesting that Snoke wasn’t even real in the first place.

On the Fan Theories Subreddit, a user reckons Darth Plagueis was pulling the strings all along - perhaps even literally.

JonWesHarding wrote: “Snoke is a puppet. Like, literally a puppet.

“He is a corpse with a big-ass slice through his skull from a previous battle to the death, likely from a lightsabre. 

“An insanely powerful force user (Darth Plagueis) is puppeteering this body to fool his enemies from a distance, completely safe and completely undetected.”

That would certainly explain Snoke’s hideous injuries - but is it remotely feasible?

Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi’s writer and director, has never shied away from the fact that Snoke’s backstory would not be explored in Episode 8.

He said in a recent interview with /Film: “Kylo’s arc in this movie, besides his relationship with Rey, I saw as the big arc for Kylo breaking down this kind of unstable foundation that he’s on and then building him to where by the end of the film he’s no longer just a Vader wannabe. But he’s stepped into his own as kind of a quote-unquote villain, but a complicated villain that you understand, right?  

“So with that in mind, the idea that Kylo would get to that place by the end of it led me to think, well, then what is Snoke’s place at the end?  And does that work with him just kneeling before Snoke at the end?  No. 

“If Kylo’s gotta get to a place of actual power, the ultimate expression of that would be him ascending beyond his master.

“And that also then gives the opportunity to have a great, dramatic moment that you don’t expect of getting Snoke kind of out of the way.”

Star Wars 8: The Last Jedi is out now.