Every Snoke Origin Clue In Star Wars Stories After The Rise of Skywalker

Little by little, Star Wars is revealing the truth about Supreme Leader Snoke – here are all the clues to his origin that have been dropped to date.

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Star Wars tie-ins have provided many clues to the creation of Supreme Leader Snoke, Emperor Palpatine’s puppet in the sequel trilogy. Lucasfilm launched the sequel trilogy without much of a plan, and as a result, Star Wars: The Force Awakens seemed to be setting up Supreme Leader Snoke as the trilogy’s “Big Bad.” But when Rian Johnson took over for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, he quickly decided the Emperor-student dynamic between Snoke and Kylo Ren was tired and repetitive. “It would have stopped any of these scenes dead cold if he had stopped and given a 30-second speech about how he’s Darth Plagueis,” Johnson explained in one interview. “It doesn’t matter to Rey. If he had done that, Rey would have blinked and said, ‘Who?'”

Still, when J.J. Abrams returned for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, he chose to finally reveal Snoke’s origin. When Kylo Ren arrived at the Sith redoubt of Exegol, he discovered evidence of sophisticated cloning and genetic engineering experiments. The artificially-created creatures within cloning cylinders were recognizably Snoke-like, and shortly afterwards the resurrected Emperor Palpatine revealed the truth. “My boy,” the Emperor teased, “I made Snoke,” confirming the leader of the First Order – and mentor of Kylo Ren – had only ever been his puppet.

Star Wars is currently attempting to fix the many plot holes and continuity SNAFUs created by the sequel trilogy, albeit with mixed success. The broad thrust of Snoke’s origin story was clarified in The Star Wars Book, which revealed Snoke is a “strandcast” – an artificial genetic construct created by the Emperor to be his proxy. Tie-ins have since been exploring the overarching story of the Supreme Leader, allowing viewers to put the pieces together into a single coherent narrative. It’s easiest to look at these in an in-universe chronological order, rather than order of release, because it helps clarify this story.

Star Wars: The Bad Batch Teases The Creation Of Snoke

Star Wars: The Bad Batch episode 9 featured a significant scene in which the young clone Omega explored an old Kaminoan facility in the Lido system. Although the Kaminoans are cloners by nature, they also seem to have excelled at genetic engineering, because they’d begun attempting to create clones with desirable mutations. Significantly, one of the clones in a nutrient tank seemed to be a Kaminoan with exaggerated proportions, reminiscent of Supreme Leader Snoke. The implication is that the groundwork for Snoke’s creation can be found in Kaminoan experiments predating the Clone Wars themselves. Star Wars: The Bad Batch was hinting at Snoke prototypes decades before the Emperor’s death.

The Empire Pursued Cloning In The Dark Times

The next clue is offered in Charles Soule’s first Darth Vader run, which revealed the Emperor commissioned a number of scientists to work on cloning experiments – right up until the time of the Galactic Civil War. While these experiments really foreshadow Palpatine’s own resurrection – the scientists were creating personality maps to copy them into clone bodies after they died, doing with technology what the Emperor would accomplish through the Force – they are still important in this context. They confirm the Empire began conducting cloning and genetic engineering experiments akin to the Kaminoans’, under Palpatine’s direct command.

The Severed Hand Of Luke Skywalker May Point To Snoke’s Creation

Incredibly, it’s possible Palpatine used Luke Skywalker’s hand as part of his experiments to create Snoke. Greg Pak’s Darth Vader #11 is set shortly after The Empire Strikes Back, and it sees Darth Vader discover the existence of Exegol and Darth Sidious’ experiments there. Although the facility was clearly the same as the one seen in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the operation was at its height, and every clone cannister was filled. The Emperor boasted this was his “scalpel of creation,” and insisted he can make use of anything – with Vader noticing a severed hand. This is likely the hand Luke Skywalker lost during his duel with his father on Bespin in The Empire Strikes Back, raising the possibility Luke’s own DNA was used to create Snoke.

Imperial Cloning Experiments In The Mandalorian

These threads are next picked up in The Mandalorian, which introduced viewers to the delightful character of Grogu (aka Baby Yoda). This diminutive Force-sensitive was revealed to be sought after by a group of Imperials who were attempting to extract Grogu’s midichlorians and inject them into host bodies, presumably in an attempt to grant them Force-sensitivity. These experiments were being conducted by an Imperial Clone Engineer named Dr. Pershing, whose insignia was Kaminoan in design, suggesting he had trained in Kaminoan science and technology. They were proving only partly successful, resulting in “catastrophic” disfigurements to the host bodies; this, presumably, explains Snoke’s own twisted, mutilated form. The musical score in The Mandalorian season 2, episode 4 – in which Din Djarin discovered one of Dr. Pershing’s old labs – bears a marked similarity to Snoke’s theme, subtly pointing to the connection. It’s important to remember The Mandalorian is set five years after Return of the Jedi, meaning Palpatine would have already been resurrected in a clone body by this time.

Star Wars Reveals The Reason Palpatine Needed Snoke As A Proxy

But why did the Emperor need Supreme Leader Snoke in the first place? The Star Wars Book provides an answer, revealing the cloning processes that allowed Palpatine to rise from the dead were far from perfected. “Darth Sidious’ cloned body rapidly deteriorates, trapping [Palpatine] on Exegol as his frail form is unable to leave,” it explains. Ironically, it is likely the Emperor’s experiments were hampered by the fact they were being conducted on the dark side redoubt of Exegol, because the dark side is inimical to life – and in the old Expanded Universe, the dark side had a deleterious effect on a clone body. As explained in the Jedi Vs. Sith handbook, “because the clones are one step removed from the natural life process itself, they are much more vulnerable to the effects of the dark side, and age at an extremely accelerated rate.” This likely further explains why the Emperor had so many Snoke clones, because he would have periodically had to replace the Supreme Leader.

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At present, the origin of Supreme Leader Snoke remains clouded in mystery. Still, all the various tie-in media seem to be hinting at an overarching narrative in which Kaminoan experiments were taken over by the Empire, with Palpatine focused mainly on using cloning as a means of avoiding death, only to become interested in the idea of strandcasts as proxies when his own resurrection went wrong. The most curious idea is that Snoke could have been created using Skywalker DNA, but so far, that’s only been hinted at, and not explicitly confirmed. Hopefully, Star Wars will eventually reveal the truth.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/star-wars-snoke-origin-clone-hints-after-rise-skywalker/