Back when The Force Awakens came out, everyone had the same question: who the hell is Supreme Leader Snoke? He showed up out of nowhere, dripping in dark side power, manipulating Ben Solo, and barking orders like some ancient Sith mastermind. The theories exploded—Darth Plagueis, a lost Sith lord, maybe even a clone of Palpatine or Luke himself. But across three movies, we never got a real answer.
For years, Snoke was one of the biggest mysteries in Star Wars. The sequels teased his power but never told us who he actually was. It wasn’t until Secrets of the Sith, a book released quietly a few years ago, that we got the clearest answer. He wasn’t ancient. He wasn’t unique. He was a puppet. And he was always Palpatine’s clone from the start.
Snoke Was Grown in a Lab to Be Palpatine’s Puppet
Let me walk you through how Snoke was first created on the planet Exegol, as if you remember the first time when Kylo Ren set foot on Exegol to confront Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, we literally get to see that there are many clones of Snoke inside the cloning cylinders.
However, as we saw in The Bad Batch, the Empire began early experiments that would eventually connect to what The Mandalorian later calls Project Necromancer. The goal? Clone a Force-sensitive body—because only a being with a high midichlorian count could survive having Palpatine’s essence transferred into it. Force sensitivity wasn’t optional. It was the key to making the Sith’s resurrection plan work.
Snoke, however, was a different case. He wasn’t made using someone else’s Force-rich blood—he was cloned directly from Palpatine’s own tissue. After the Emperor’s death in Return of the Jedi, Sidious had already planned for this. He used Kaminoan-inspired cloning tech to create vessels that might one day hold his spirit.
This information was first confirmed in Skywalker: A Family at War by Kristin Baver, which reveals: “Palpatine’s own genetic line prospered in the shadows, both through the intervention of Kaminoan cloning technology and more natural means.”
But Skywalker: A Family at War only gives us a surface-level mention of how Palpatine began cloning himself using his own body. For a deeper look, we have Star Wars: Secrets of the Sith by Marc Sumerak, which gives us Palpatine’s point of view on Snoke’s creation.
In the book, Palpatine admits that his cloning process took years, and even then, it wasn’t perfect. He says plainly: “Even after years of experimentation, the cloning techniques employed by my acolytes were inadequate. They could not create a vessel capable of containing my unfathomable power.”
Snoke was the closest they ever got. He wasn’t a perfect clone, and he couldn’t contain Palpatine’s full essence, but he was powerful in the Force. That made him useful. As Palpatine explains, “As part of their genetic experiments, my followers had attempted to create another being that came to be known as Snoke. Although his body proved unworthy of containing my dark essence, Snoke’s natural sensitivity to the Force would make him a powerful puppet nonetheless.”
Snoke Was the Only Clone That Survived, But He Was Still Just a Puppet
Snoke might’ve been the most stable clone Palpatine’s followers ever made, but that didn’t mean he was meant to rule anything. He was never designed to be a successor—he was built to be a stand-in. The Secrets of the Sith book makes it crystal clear: Palpatine tried again and again to clone himself after his death in Return of the Jedi, but none of the vessels could handle the raw, dark power of his spirit.
Snoke had real Force power. That wasn’t faked. But his entire existence was built around being controlled. Every decision, every move he made—none of it was truly his. He was a voicepiece for Palpatine, a way to operate in the shadows and manipulate the galaxy without revealing that the Emperor had returned.
That’s why Palpatine let Snoke lead the First Order and seduce Ben Solo. It wasn’t about Snoke’s grand vision—it was about softening up the next generation so Palpatine could swoop in when the time was right. Snoke looked like the master, but he was never more than a tool. Even his rise was artificial.
And it’s not just Secrets of the Sith. You can see it in The Rise of Skywalker when Kylo Ren walks into the Sith cloning chamber on Exegol and sees multiple Snoke bodies floating in tanks. He wasn’t one of a kind. He was mass-produced. Replaceable.