First Order (Star Wars)

The First Order is a fictional military power in the Star Wars franchise, introduced in the 2015 film Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Resurrected from the fallen Galactic Empire after the events of Return of the Jedi (1983), the organization has amassed its power in secret over three decades. In The Force Awakens, the First Order has begun executing its plan to depose the New Republic and reclaim control of the galaxy. The Knights of Ren are a mysterious group of elite warriors within their ranks, led by Kylo Ren.

Critics and fans have noted the use of imagery highly reminiscent of Nazi Germany for the First Order in The Force Awakens, including a sequence mimicking the 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will. The Force Awakens writer/director J. J. Abrams said that the First Order is inspired by the theory of ODESSA, which allegedly involved SS officers fleeing to Argentina following World War II.

Backstory
According to Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary (2015) and the novel Aftermath (2015) by Chuck Wendig, after the Galactic Empire is defeated in Return of the Jedi at the climactic Battle of Endor, thousands of worlds rise up to join the Rebel Alliance and destroy the disorganized Imperials. The Alliance formally reorganizes itself as the New Republic, and retakes the core worlds, including the galactic capital Coruscant. One year after Endor, the remaining Imperial Fleet makes a final, massive attempt at a counter-offensive which comes to a climax at the planet Jakku, the biggest battle in the war since Endor. Ultimately, however, this Imperial counter-offensive is decisively defeated, leaving Jakku littered with debris and crashed ships. Reduced to a handful of heavily fortified sectors on the fringe of the Outer Rim, the remnants of the Empire settle for a humiliating armistice agreement which imposes strict disarmament treaties and punishing reparations on the remaining Imperials.

Over time, the rump state of the old Galactic Empire reorganizes itself into the First Order, led by the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke. The First Order became a firmly entrenched and isolationist hermit kingdom, and spends the next three decades gradually rebuilding its military strength, secretly re-arming in violation of its armistice agreements. The First Order also secretly expands from its original few sectors (in the galactic north), aggressively pushing into the Unknown Regions (the unexplored swaths of territory in the galactic west) to seize new undeveloped worlds there to supplement their resource base, as well as build new shipyards and industrial infrastructure far away from the eyes of the New Republic. The majority of the New Republic's Senate disregards reports of the First Order's activities, but Leia Organa builds her own private army, known as the Resistance, to fight the First Order within its own borders. She is joined by other members of the former Rebel Alliance such as Admiral Ackbar. Publicly the New Republic continues to disavow direct association with the Resistance to maintain plausible deniability, and though the majority of the Senate does not want to intervene against the First Order, several Senators privately channel funds and resources to the Resistance.

The First Order's handful of sectors simply do not possess the galaxy-wide resources the old Empire used to be able to draw upon, and in addition the armistice treaties with the New Republic put strict limitations on how many ships it could physically build. Therefore, unlike the old Galactic Empire's swarm tactics, the First Order's military has had to adapt to a more quality over quantity philosophy, making efficient use of what few resources it has. While its fleet is a fraction of the size of the Imperial Fleet at its height, on a one-for-one basis its new ships are much more powerful. In addition to this they also boast thirty years' worth of advances in military technologies compared to the old Empire. As a result the First Order now deploys starships such as the new Resurgent-class Star Destroyer, nearly twice as large as the old Imperial-class Star Destroyer which it replaced as the mainstay of the Imperial/First Order fleet. The First Order's TIE fighters, designated TIE/fo, are also more advanced than the old Empire's TIE/ln model, and show greater concern for unit survivability. The First Order's Special Forces also use a more heavily armed two-man TIE/sf variant.

The Force Awakens (2015)
In the film, the First Order is led by a mysterious figure named Snoke, who has assumed the title of Supreme Leader. Like the Empire before them, the Order commands a vast force of stormtroopers, some specially trained in the use of flamethrowers, manportable light artillery systems, and riot control gear. The First Order also utilizes regular and Special Forces versions of the Empire's venerable TIE fighter. Its primary base of operations is Starkiller Base, a fortified ice planet which houses a superweapon capable of destroying entire star systems from a great distance. The base commander of Starkiller is General Hux, a ruthless young officer dedicated to the Order.

Snoke is a powerful figure in the dark side of the Force and has corrupted Ben, the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa who had been an apprentice to his uncle, the Jedi Luke Skywalker. Masked and using the name Kylo Ren, he is one of Snoke's enforcers, much like his grandfather Darth Vader had been the enforcer of Emperor Palpatine during the days of the Empire decades earlier. Ren is one of the Knights of Ren, a mysterious group of elite warriors. Ren and Hux are rivals for Snoke's approval, and the third member of the "commanding triumvirate" of the First Order is the formidable Captain Phasma, the commander of the stormtroopers.

Ren is searching for Luke, who vanished some years earlier. Snoke believes that as long as Luke lives, the Jedi may rise again. The First Order destroys Hosnian Prime, the New Republic's current capital world, using the Starkiller superweapon. Ren fails to retrieve the map fragment that would lead him to Luke, and the Resistance manages to destroy the Starkiller Base moments before it was due to fire on the Resistance base on D'Qar.

Reception
Robbie Collin of The Telegraph described the disfigured and skeletal Snoke as a "sepulchral horror". The newspaper also called Hux "a spitting fanatic of the First Order whose every gesture speaks of utter contempt for, well, everyone".