Palpatine clone theory reveals Snoke's ties to a shadowy prequel figure

Star Wars has been mad about clones recently. The Imperial loyalists in The Mandalorian hunting down Baby Yoda have some kind of affiliation with the cloning facility on Kamino from the prequel movies. The final season of The Clone Wars is currently airing on Disney+, the Rise of Skywalker briefly featured a tank full of Snoke clones on Exegol, and the movie's official novelization recently revealed that Palpatine and Rey's dad were both clones. Amid this flurry of clone news, one fan has made a particularly compelling argument about who Snoke was cloned from.

Reddit user ZorinIndustries argues Supreme Leader Snoke was an imperfect clone of Darth Plagueis, Palpatine's old master. Some keen-eared fans had already concluded that Snoke was Darth Plagueis due to the hints of music from the iconic opera scene in the prequels popping up in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

Plagueis had attempted to glean the secret to eternal life. According to the theorist, Palpatine learned this secret from before killing his master. However, instead of cloning himself at first, Palpatine cloned Plagueis, resulting in Snoke.

The novelization tells us the cloning method was imperfect: Rey's dad was the sole survivor, but he was not Force-sensitive.

So if the only way to achieve an actually healthy clone is to lose the Force sensitivity, perhaps the opposite logic applies as well: a Force-sensitive clone of Plagueis would be decrepit and misshapen. Meanwhile, Rey's dad had a "perfect body" and no force ability, according to the TROS novelization.

So why doesn't Snoke act like Darth Plagueis? The Clone Wars taught us that all clones have unique personalities. Palpatine's clone in Rise of Skywalker had his personality because possessed its body while he was falling down that shaft (and exploding) in Return of the Jedi.

Palpatine used Snoke as a puppet leader while he worked out the kinks of the cloning technology and amassed the Sith Fleet that was essential to his return to power. Palpatine tells Kylo Ren, "My boy, I made Snoke." Snoke possibly being a brainwashed, mutilated clone of Palpatine's master gives these words a whole new meaning.

From a certain point of view, this could be interpreted to mean that Snoke is also Palpatine's "son," as it was his idea to clone him. Meaning Snoke...would be Rey's weird uncle, adding to her family of Sith clones. But that would also mean Palpatine's the father of the entire clone army, so maybe not.

The Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition releases March 17, 2020.