Domhnall Gleeson and General Hux: The Unused Potential Behind The Rise of Skywalker

Domhnall Gleeson has described a clear unrealized aspiration for General Hux: the opportunity to expose the private bitterness beneath the First Order officer’s public discipline. Across three Star Wars films, Hux moved from a commanding rival to Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens to an increasingly isolated subordinate in The Last Jedi, before becoming a covert Resistance asset in The Rise of Skywalker. The progression existed, but its decisive interior stages remained largely unseen.

I would direct the reader’s attention to the distinction between plot function and character development. Hux fulfilled several plot functions efficiently: he represented First Order bureaucracy, enabled the heroes’ escape, and supplied a rapid betrayal within the Sith Eternal operation. Yet a character’s tactical usefulness does not automatically produce a fully articulated motive. Gleeson’s observations in a recent actor interview identify the missing terrain: quiet scenes in which humiliation, resentment, and fear become legible without performance for superiors or troops.

The visible Hux is frequently theatrical. His Starkiller Base address is designed as political spectacle, drawing on the visual grammar of authoritarian rallies: angular architecture, synchronized formations, hard light, and a voice intended to transform military power into religious certainty. The private Hux could have been more dangerous precisely because he would not need an audience. An intelligent opponent does not always proclaim hostility. He studies the chain of command, finds its weak point, and waits.

Gleeson’s preference for a less performative treatment would have sharpened the logic of Hux’s later espionage. The final film reveals that Hux helps Poe, Finn, and Chewbacca escape not because he supports the Resistance, but because he wants Kylo Ren to lose. That objective is strategically coherent, but the film spends little time demonstrating how years of public diminishment became an operational decision. The reader can examine Gleeson’s remarks on Hux’s underlying bitterness as evidence that the performer saw a deeper conflict beneath the abbreviated screen arc.

⚠️ The central issue is not that General Hux required redemption. His trajectory required causation. A calculating officer who turns against a commander because that commander has repeatedly stripped him of authority is credible. A film that shows the accumulated damage makes the betrayal inevitable rather than merely surprising. The next operational question is therefore not whether Hux should have survived, but how the First Order’s command culture manufactured its own internal adversary.

General Hux’s Decline from First Order Rival to Marginalized Officer

The first strategic error in Hux’s screen trajectory is not his eventual treason. It is the leadership environment that makes his treason useful to him. In The Force Awakens, he commands Starkiller Base and competes openly with Kylo Ren for Supreme Leader Snoke’s approval. Their conflict establishes two competing institutions: Hux represents logistics, technology, indoctrination, and conventional fleet power; Kylo Ren represents mystical authority, personal violence, and the unpredictable status granted by the dark side.

Neither institution is inherently ineffective. The weakness emerges when Snoke encourages rivalry without defining a stable hierarchy of responsibilities. A military organization can absorb disagreement when command boundaries are clear. It collapses when public humiliation becomes the system’s method of control. Hux is repeatedly denied the ability to appear competent, while Kylo receives latitude despite impulsive conduct. The lesson is procedural: commanders who use subordinates as props may secure obedience for a moment, but they also create incentives for concealment and revenge.

In The Last Jedi, Hux becomes more vulnerable to comic humiliation and receives less room to operate as a serious adversary. This tonal shift is not merely a matter of dialogue. It alters the audience’s assessment of his operational capacity. Earlier, he presides over planetary destruction. Later, he is physically and verbally dominated by Kylo Ren in front of First Order personnel. Such scenes reduce his authority while preserving his access to sensitive information. That is a hazardous combination.

Consider the cultural contrast. Imperial command design, from the severe corridors of an Imperial-class Star Destroyer to the ceremonial restraint of officers such as Grand Moff Tarkin, often communicates that rank is a form of controlled performance. By comparison, the First Order favors spectacle without institutional patience. Its uniforms, banners, and massed troops imitate the old Empire’s aesthetic, but imitation of art does not produce mastery of structure. A copied painting retains its colors while losing the artist’s intent.

• 🛡️ Early position: Hux controls a strategic superweapon and competes for influence.
• ⚙️ Middle position: his technical and military authority is repeatedly undermined in public.
• 🕵️ Final position: he retains intelligence access but lacks a meaningful future within the regime.
• 🎯 Result: sabotage becomes a rational instrument of personal survival and retaliation.

The reader should not mistake this sequence for a defense of Hux. His crimes remain extensive, including participation in the destruction of Hosnian Prime and the New Republic’s central institutions. The analysis concerns the command failure that enabled his betrayal. A regime that treats every officer as expendable will eventually discover that an expendable officer may choose the moment of collapse. The following evidence lies in the compressed spy operation of The Rise of Skywalker.

The Rise of Skywalker Spy Reveal and the Compressed General Hux Arc

In The Rise of Skywalker, General Hux reveals himself as the informant assisting the Resistance during the capture-and-escape sequence involving Poe Dameron, Finn, and Chewbacca. His statement is severe in its simplicity: he does not seek a Resistance victory; he seeks Kylo Ren’s defeat. This is an effective line because it defines his motive as destructive rather than ideological. Yet it also exposes how much narrative preparation was absent before the disclosure.

A spy narrative requires three visible components: access, motive, and risk. Hux possesses access because he operates near the First Order’s highest command channels. He possesses motive because Kylo Ren displaced and degraded him. Risk is evident because discovery means immediate execution. The film establishes all three, but it does so in rapid succession. The viewer receives the structure of espionage without sufficient time to observe the psychological machinery that drives it.

Gleeson previously indicated that he understood the pressure to keep the sci-fi movie moving. This point is operationally sound. A final installment in a major film franchise must manage numerous objectives: Rey’s lineage, Palpatine’s return, the Sith Eternal fleet, Leia’s final role, Ben Solo’s reversal, and the Resistance assault on Exegol. Each new objective reduces available screen time. However, scarcity of minutes does not require scarcity of meaning. A restrained exchange, perhaps between Hux and a lower-ranking aide, could have supplied the required evidence.

Imagine a silent command-deck moment after Kylo Ren receives intelligence Hux helped leak. Hux might watch officers alter displays to accommodate a new order, then recognize that no one asks for his authorization. No confession would be needed. The placement of his hands, the silence around him, and the removal of a command code could establish that he has become politically obsolete. Star Wars has often used such economy well: Vader’s wordless observation of an officer, Leia’s pause before a difficult order, or Cassian Andor’s guarded calculations can convey entire histories.

🔍 The spy revelation works as a plot event but remains underdeveloped as an emotional event. Gleeson’s unrealized aspirations identify a practical repair: show the resentment before it becomes action. The audience then sees not a sudden twist, but a disciplined act of self-preservation by a man who has concluded that his own side has already discarded him.

The consequences of this compression become clearer when Hux encounters Allegiant General Enric Pryde. Their brief conflict is not a duel between equals; it is an execution of a compromised asset. Pryde’s arrival demonstrates the kind of authority Hux no longer possesses.

Allegiant General Pryde as the Force That Ends Hux’s Strategic Value

Richard E. Grant’s Allegiant General Pryde enters The Rise of Skywalker with a different command profile from Hux. Pryde is aligned with Palpatine’s restored hierarchy, understands the Sith Eternal’s objective, and does not need public validation from Kylo Ren. His manner is less theatrical because his legitimacy derives from proximity to the true source of authority. Where Hux must constantly demonstrate relevance, Pryde operates as though relevance has already been granted.

When Pryde identifies Hux as the spy and shoots him, the moment is efficient and cruelly logical. An officer who leaks intelligence during an existential campaign cannot remain alive once exposed. The difficulty is not the military plausibility of the death. The difficulty is that the film has only just begun to reveal the character’s most revealing strategic choice. Hux dies immediately after he becomes narratively unpredictable.

The execution also carries a broader institutional message. First Order leadership treats disloyalty as a terminal problem, not as intelligence to be studied. Pryde does not ask what Hux disclosed, how long the leak lasted, whether others share his grievance, or what structural weakness enabled it. Such questions matter. In real command terms, eliminating a traitor prevents further damage, but it does not repair the system that produced the breach.

Command factor	General Hux	Allegiant General Pryde	Strategic effect
⚔️ Source of authority	First Order rank and inherited influence	Direct alignment with Palpatine’s return	Hux becomes politically vulnerable
🧠 Primary method	Infrastructure, propaganda, weapons systems	Hierarchy, secrecy, decisive enforcement	Pryde acts faster in crisis
🔒 Response to dissent	Concealed sabotage against Kylo Ren	Immediate execution of the infiltrator	The organization removes a symptom, not its cause

The visual language reinforces this shift. Hux’s costumes and posture frequently convey constrained agitation; Pryde’s controlled stillness resembles the older Imperial officer class. Yet Pryde’s apparent discipline should not be confused with durable strategy. He serves a fleet dependent on a vulnerable navigation mechanism and an isolated command structure on Exegol. His personal efficiency cannot compensate for a campaign designed around a single catastrophic point of failure.

For the reader, the crucial deduction is direct: Hux’s death ends an individual threat, while Pryde’s failure to examine the wider institution preserves the conditions for defeat. The next area of analysis is the adversary Hux underestimated even while secretly enabling it—the Resistance’s capacity to exploit fractures within authoritarian command.

How the Resistance Exploited First Order Fractures in Star Wars

The Resistance does not defeat the Final Order because it possesses greater conventional strength. It prevails because it identifies dependencies and converts disorder into momentum. Hux’s intelligence assistance is one element of that larger pattern. He provides a temporary breach, allowing key prisoners to escape and rejoin the struggle. The practical value of that breach is not measured only in bodies saved; it restores experienced personnel to a network built on trust, improvisation, and shared risk.

The contrast between the Resistance and the First Order is organizational before it is military. Resistance leaders argue, improvise, and sometimes fail, but the structure permits individual initiative. Poe can act independently, Finn can choose a moral break from indoctrination, and Rey can confront a legacy without becoming its prisoner. The First Order, meanwhile, uses centralized fear to enforce cohesion. Once authority is contested between Kylo Ren, Palpatine, Pryde, and residual military figures, the organization lacks a reliable method for adaptation.

This pattern has historical precedents within Star Wars. At Endor, the Empire possessed the Death Star II, a shield generator, a fleet, and an Emperor directing the encounter. Its defeat came not from inadequate hardware but from neglected variables: the Rebel strike team, the Ewoks’ terrain knowledge, and Vader’s capacity for a personal decision outside expected command behavior. The Ewoks were not a major strategic force at the beginning of the battle. They were a variable that Imperial planning failed to evaluate.

The Final Order repeats that error on Exegol. Thousands of Sith Eternal vessels may appear overwhelming, but a fleet unable to navigate beyond an atmospheric barrier without a vulnerable guide system is not invulnerable. The Resistance identifies the operational dependency, concentrates effort, and attacks it. Hux’s earlier sabotage follows the same principle on a smaller scale: he does not need to control the Resistance. He only needs to create a gap in First Order control.

Readers interested in how power systems and ideological contradictions shape this galaxy can compare this breakdown with an analysis of the Sith paradox and the balance of the Force. The political and mystical dimensions differ, but both reveal the same operational truth: systems founded on domination struggle to process independent will.

🚀 A weaker adversary becomes decisive when it understands which dependency the stronger force refuses to protect. That principle leads directly to the scenes Gleeson suggested: not louder declarations, but smaller observations showing the exact point at which Hux recognizes the vulnerability of his own regime.

Domhnall Gleeson’s Unrealized Aspirations for Hux’s Quiet Bitterness

Domhnall Gleeson’s most useful observation concerns tone. He did not merely request additional scenes or a longer movie role. He described a desire to explore Hux’s “real bitterness” in quieter moments, where the danger would not be performative. This distinction matters because Hux’s existing public behavior is already loud: speeches, orders, insults, and visible rivalry. Repeating that register would not reveal the source of his hostility.

The “kicked dog” image used by Gleeson is deliberately uncomfortable, but it provides a functional model for the character. Repeated humiliation can produce submission, withdrawal, or retaliatory violence. Hux chooses retaliation because his environment leaves him neither institutional security nor personal dignity. The film could have shown this through controlled details rather than exposition: a subordinate receiving orders once reserved for Hux, a report amended without his approval, or a private reaction to hearing Kylo Ren addressed as Supreme Leader.

Such a scene would have improved not only Hux but Kylo Ren. A ruler is measured partly by how subordinates behave when he is absent. If Hux quietly plots against him, the audience learns that Kylo’s authority creates compliance but not loyalty. That is a meaningful distinction in every military hierarchy. Fear can compel a salute. It cannot guarantee that a communications officer will transmit the unaltered coordinates.

Gleeson remained broadly positive about his work in the film franchise, even while explaining what he hoped might have been explored. That balance is significant. The critique does not deny the scale, craft, or collaborative achievement of the trilogy. It isolates a specific missed opportunity in character development. The performer recognizes that the final film had a demanding pace, yet also sees how a few carefully positioned beats might have transformed the interpretation of Hux’s betrayal.

There is a useful artistic comparison in the fractured portraiture of the Naboo and Chandrilan traditions, where formal posture can conceal tension through slight asymmetry in line and color. A portrait need not depict a subject shouting to communicate instability. One altered gaze, one rigid hand, or one shadow placed against ceremonial blue can reveal conflict. Cinema operates similarly. Hux did not require absolution or a grand monologue. He required composition.

🎭 The unexplored material was not an alternate story; it was the internal evidence that would have made the existing story more precise. That precision can be measured against the scenes that would have served the film without damaging its forward movement.

A useful reconstruction must remain disciplined. It should not invent an entirely separate campaign or turn Hux into a sympathetic hero. It should add only the minimum scenes required to establish motive, surveillance, and consequence.

What The Rise of Skywalker Could Have Added to General Hux’s Character Development

A revised treatment of General Hux could be accomplished with three short sequences. The first would occur early, after Kylo Ren’s authority becomes established. Hux receives a command order that bypasses him, perhaps delivered by a junior officer who is visibly uncertain. He signs the order, dismisses the officer, and then pauses over a First Order insignia. No dialogue is necessary. The image establishes displacement without delaying the main narrative.

The second sequence would show Hux making the decision to leak information. Rather than revealing him immediately as a spy, the film could show a coded transmission leaving his console after he receives another public slight. The audience would not know its recipient. This introduces suspense and gives later events a retrospective meaning. A careful viewer would recognize that the betrayal was not spontaneous; it was prepared.

The third sequence would follow Pryde’s discovery. Instead of immediate execution after a brief accusation, Pryde could identify the evidence while Hux understands the trap closing around him. Hux might attempt neither denial nor escape, because both would be inconsistent with a man who knows he has no faction left. His final look toward the command chamber could establish the point: the institution he served has consumed him before his enemy has.

1. 🛰️ Show displacement: reveal that Hux’s authority is being methodically removed.
2. 📡 Plant the leak: let the audience observe a suspicious action before knowing its purpose.
3. 🗡️ Stage the discovery: make Pryde’s execution the result of intelligence work, not mere convenience.
4. ⚖️ Preserve moral clarity: Hux remains responsible for First Order atrocities despite his betrayal.

This approach would protect the film’s urgency. The added material could occupy fewer minutes than a prolonged action exchange, while increasing coherence across the entire sequel trilogy. It would also honor the difference between surprise and inevitability. Surprise asks the audience to react. Inevitability asks the audience to recognize that every previous decision has led to this precise outcome.

For a broader view of how Star Wars technology can shape plot weaknesses and military outcomes, the reader may examine this discussion of technologies across the Star Wars galaxy. Starkiller Base, Sith Eternal destroyers, hyperspace tracking, and communications systems are never neutral props; each imposes limits on the people who command them.

📌 The strongest revision would not make Hux larger than the story. It would make the story’s existing decisions more legible. From this point, the lessons extend beyond one officer and one sci-fi movie to the broader command failures repeatedly visible in authoritarian Star Wars forces.

Strategic Lessons from General Hux for Future Star Wars Conflicts

General Hux’s final arc offers a disciplined set of lessons for any Star Wars command structure. The First Order possessed fleet assets, advanced weaponry, trained troops, and ideological machinery. Yet none of these advantages could guarantee cohesion when senior figures competed for survival. Material strength is only one component of power. Trust, predictable authority, and a credible future for competent officers are equally important.

The first lesson is that public humiliation is not a substitute for discipline. Kylo Ren’s treatment of Hux establishes dominance in the immediate moment, but it erodes the reliability of the command system. A prudent commander corrects errors privately when possible and visibly enforces standards only when the organization needs a clear signal. The goal is not kindness. The goal is preventing the creation of skilled, informed enemies inside one’s own headquarters.

The second lesson is that antagonists require motives with operational weight. A villain can be cruel, cowardly, ambitious, or compromised, but the audience must understand how those traits guide decisions under pressure. Gleeson’s comments show why a few private scenes matter: they convert abstract resentment into observable intent. In narrative terms, this gives the reader—or viewer—the ability to predict behavior. In strategic terms, it reveals where an alliance will fracture.

The third lesson concerns cultural imitation. The First Order borrows Imperial imagery, but it lacks the durable administrative identity that once held the Empire together across immense distances. Its red-and-black spectacle projects unity while concealing constant insecurity. Artistic language exposes political reality. A uniform, a banner, and a massive parade can declare permanence; they cannot create it.

The final lesson is directed toward the reader: examine the quiet figure at the edge of the command room. That figure may hold a keycard, a launch code, a prisoner manifest, or an unspoken grievance. The obvious champion is not always the decisive variable. In The Rise of Skywalker, Hux’s betrayal is brief, but it demonstrates how an overlooked officer can alter the movements of larger forces.

🛰️ General Hux was not defeated solely by Pryde’s blaster shot. He was defeated earlier, when First Order leadership reduced a capable but embittered officer to a disposable instrument and failed to notice that he had begun choosing another target.