Written by Snoke was supposed to be the body that would house Emperor Palpatine’s spirit
At the end of ‘Return of the Jedi’, Luke Skywalker- having declared his undying allegiance to the Light Side of the Force – lies on the ground, tortured by sinister Force lightning and on the brink of death. As Darth Vader watched on, we see that he could take it no longer. Having previously given up hope for himself, a final change of heart emerged and the former Anakin Skywalker grabbed the twisted form of the Emperor, making one final declaration of redemption by tossing him down a main reactor shaft.
Despite its satisfying end, in modern canon from ‘The Rise of Skywalker’, we of course learn that Emperor Palpatine- the sinister ‘Darth Sidious’ had in one sense lived on. As his body fell down a Death Star shaft to its impending destruction, we learn from the adult novelization – Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition that Sidious managed to send his consciousness towards a clone body of his own creation. The body had been in fact designed prior by a secret Sith cult known as the Sith Eternal using technology from the old Clone Wars era.
Just how Sidious managed to accomplish this feat prior to his death is not entirely known. From ‘The Last Jedi’ though, we observe Luke Skywalker’s display of the Force to project an illusion an immense distance across the galaxy. Likely in some similar fashion, Palpatine managed to send his spirit across time and space using the Dark Side of the Force, forcing it into the cloned body he had prepared on Exegol.
Interestingly, the canon story is not altogether very different from that in the Legends in which Palpatine is guided by the spirits of four deceased ancient Dark Lords of the Sith to find his way to the clone bodies he had prepared on the planet, Byss. The clone bodies, however were weakened by containing the Dark Side of Palpatine, forcing him to transition from one clone body to the next at an ever-increasing rate.
In canon, a similar effect was also observed when Palpatine entered his cloned body. Upon taking his first breath as he jolted to new awareness, he realized that the vessel housing his spirit could only be temporary as it would suffer from rapid deterioration. The source of deterioration was caused by his new body’s inability to sufficiently contain the immense Dark Side of the Force existing within his spirit.
With his flesh rotting and weak, his eyes clouding over with cataracts, Sidious remained unperturbed and patiently strove to enlist the aid of his ever-growing loyalists, the Sith Eternal, to carefully enact his ultimate plan to overthrow the New Republic and regain control of the galaxy. Due to the weakness, he was forced to remain on Exegol, attached to a mechanical spine known as an Ommin harness – named after an ancient Sith king who had previously worn the ghoulish device. To date, however, the reasons for which Ommin wore the device are not entirely known.
We do know that Palpatine eventually resorted to using the device as a means of transport, as his body – weakened and decaying from the exhausting task of housing his powers in the Dark Side – eventually became unable to walk. In an attempt to slow the decay of his body, restorative fluids also were used.
Weak, but more determined than ever, the Dark Lord of the Sith crafted a sinister plan to eventually take over the galaxy once again, with the army and fleet of the Sith Eternal crucial to his plan, creating what he would eventually call the ‘Final Order’. However, he knew his plan would take time, and finding a suitable, more capable body was part of his plan.
Using similar technology to that used to create his own body, Sidious began performing genetic experiments on Exegol using a technique known as ‘strand casting’ in the hopes of creating a new body; a technique that involved adding genes of other specimens to a base template to create modified clones possessing unique and potentially powerful abilities. His ultimate goal was to produce a vessel strong enough to house his dark essence, allowing him to rule, unhindered across the galaxy. The attempts ultimately were unsuccessful, but the results were terrifying nonetheless.
Two key products of his genetic experiments were Rey’s father, Dathan, and the First Order founder, Snoke. From Star Wars: Secrets of the Sith, we learn that one of the clone batches from Palpatine was destroyed by the intensity of the cloning process except for a single offshoot clone that turned out to be a pure biological human. This human eventually became known as ‘Dathan’. Not long after his creation, it was discovered that Dathan had excellent health, but had no ability to manipulate the Force, causing him to be called ‘useless’. Rejected by the Dark Lord, but spared to live, he wandered Exegol for a time before rejecting his parentage and the Dark Side altogether, escaping Exegol and eventually falling in love with a woman that would give birth to their daughter Rey.
Unlike Dathan who was ordinary in every way, the strandcast that became known as Snoke was extremely powerful in the Force. He was also engineered to be very tall- standing at 2.18 meters (7 ft 2 in). Yet despite his incredible potential in the Force and large stature, Palpatine frustratingly discovered that Snoke was extremely physically weak. Though nearly acceptable as a host for his maleficent spirit, Sidious ultimately found Snoke to be an unworthy vessel, and instead introduced Snoke to the known regions of the galaxy as a pawn that he would secretly manipulate from Exegol to form the First Order, possibly without even Snoke himself knowing.
