Why did Palpatine have so many Snoke clones in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
Snoke's origin was finally revealed in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It turns out he was a genetically engineered being, created by Palpatine to serve as his agent while he remained hidden on the ancient Sith world of Exegol. It's reasonable to assume Palpatine maintained a Force Bond with Snoke, and that almost everything he said - including his claim in the novelization of Star Wars: The Force Awakens to have seen the rise and fall of the Empire - was Palpatine all along. Amusingly, this was done in an equally off-hand manner, confirmed simply because Kylo Ren walked past cloning vats that contained Snoke bodies. But why did Palpatine have so many Snoke clones - and why did he create such an ugly, aged creature in the first place?
Star Wars: One Major Benefit Of Palpatine Being A Clone In The Rise of Skywalker
These questions have yet to be answered by the official Star Wars canon, but an answer may well lie in the old Expanded Universe - particularly in content based on the Dark Empire comic book series, which released in 1991 and visibly influenced Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. This revealed the dark side has 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." In Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine was actually undertaking his cloning exercises at a nexus of dark side power. It's reasonable to assume this had a massive impact on the clones, making it difficult to create healthy beings - especially given their growth was likely accelerated.
Palpatine is a vain and proud man, and given a choice he would have preferred operating through agents who could present a bold and charismatic face to the galaxy - not through a twisted being whose face was hideously deformed. Likewise, he would surely have originally attempted to create a clone of himself who was young and unscarred, not wizened and horrific. Indeed, this may well explain why he did not reveal his existence at once to the crumbling Empire or the nascent First Order; because he was attempting to get things right. Unfortunately for the Emperor, the nature of the dark side meant his cloning experiments were flawed.
Of course, there is a rich degree of irony to this explanation. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had a phenomenal number of plot holes, and tie-in content is attempting to resolve them. In this case, the resolution of the problem doesn't even lie in canon content, but rather in the old Expanded Universe. It's likely this will make its way into the canon sooner or later, though, given all the other similarities between The Rise of Skywalker and EU clone plots.
