No but guys seriously consider: Snoke is behind Kylo’s obsession with Darth Vader.
It makes sense, and would explain why he goes to such lengths to emulate him.
I think it is safe to assume that as a child his family had “The Talk” about Grandpa Vader, and placed a lot of emphasis on him not always belonging to the Dark Side, of having returned to the Light eventually, etc etc. You don’t want your child to learn about his grandfather from someone else, because the rest of the galaxy will still first and foremost see him as an evil enforcer, murderer, etc. I’m sure they spent a lot of time explaining the rights-and-wrongs to him.
So how did he eventually come to believe that his grandfather, Vader and not Anakin, was “right” and/or on the correct path? And why for the love of the Force did Anakin’s Force Ghost not show up to set things straight?
If you aren’t paying attention carefully (See: not paying obnoxious attention to every single word for examination), it could be easy to miss a big hint from the movies. Kylo/Ben, in private, says this to Vaders helmet:
“Show me again the power of the darkness, and I will finish what you started.”
Again. Show me again. This implies that Ben Solo has been shown things before. And that he has been shown these things from his grandfather. Or at least by someone who is appearing/pretending to be Vader in order to fuel or encourage Kylo Ren to do things that he is conflicted and torn up about.
Anakin sure as hell wouldn’t be doing this. Everybody is wanting Anakin’s Force Ghost to show up and knock sense into Ben in the next movie, but the question remains: why hasn’t Anakin intervened before? If he saw his grandson being led down a path similar to his, full of darkness and pain and fear and anger, he surely would have stepped in at the earliest opportunity to be like “wait no please think about this”.
There are only two possible explanations for his absence.
One: it has been nearly three decades and he is no longer capable of manifesting himself as a Force Ghost, so literally cannot intervene.
Or two: he is being prevented from intervening (by someone currently more powerful than the Force energy Anakin’s spirit is capable of using).
So. The first is directly opposed by what we know. Someone has appeared to Kylo. Someone has been encouraging him to take the path of the darkness.
Who would not only be powerful enough to do this, but who would benefit from Ben Solo’s continued fall? Snoke. He is currently the only Force-Sensitive on the Dark Side (besides Kylo’s entire conflicted self).
If Snoke was powerful and subversive enough to manipulate and corrupt Ben Solo from birth, AS IS ESTABLISHED CANON, even against the Force-sensitive strength of Mama Leia and Uncle Luke, then he should certainly be strong enough to appear/manifest some sort of Vader image-ghost-hybrid to further the manipulation/brain-washing of Ben Solo. Any right-or-wrong moral issues that Ben has without a doubt felt over the years would probably be eased slightly if the ghost of dead Grandpa who walked on both sides of the Force gave you the proverbial thumbs-up. (I go into more detail about Snoke’s manipulation of little Ben here.)
And not only this. If Snoke is powerful enough to do these things, then it draws up the possibility of him also being able to block Anakin’s actual Force Ghost from Ben, or at least prevent him from manifesting himself. So it is very possible that Anakin’s Force Ghost has not only tried before to appear to his grandson, but he may have even tried multiple times over the years, and was somehow blocked by the then-superior Force powers of Snoke.
Snoke then succeeds in not only falsely supplying Kylo Ren with a weird justification and/or push towards Snoke’s end goal (whatever that is), but he succeeds in making sure that Anakin is helpless to do anything about it.
(Edit: For anyone interested, I made a thorough analysis on what I speculate Ben’s childhood was like, even without Snoke’s influence, here) (In addition, I speculate on his redemption here, and on his “temper tantrums” here).
