In The Clone Wars episode “Clone Cadets,” there’s a quiet but important line from Prime Minister Lama Su that hints at something most fans overlook. After discussing the growing issues with certain clone batches, Lama Su tells Shaak Ti:
“My only thought is for you to search the galaxy and find a suitable donor for your future clones.”
By this point in the war, the Kaminoans had begun to notice that Jango Fett’s genetic template the foundation of the entire clone army — was starting to deteriorate. Each new generation of clones was showing more signs of instability and imperfection.
But that brings up the real question: why didn’t the Kaminoans simply find someone else? Why stick with Jango Fett’s DNA when they could’ve cloned another warrior, mercenary, or bounty hunter to keep the army strong?
Why Not Use Boba Fett’s DNA?
The first question that comes to mind is pretty obvious, if the Kaminoans were running out of Jango Fett’s DNA, why didn’t they just use Boba Fett? I mean, he’s literally Jango’s clone, and his DNA wasn’t modified like the rest of the clone army. Boba was an unaltered clone of Jango , a perfect genetic match.
So if they had another copy of Jango walking around, why not use him as the new template?
The answer comes down to a mix of genetics, access, and politics.
First, the Kaminoans couldn’t get to him. After Jango’s death on Geonosis, Boba vanished into the galaxy, eventually falling under the mentorship of other bounty hunters. He wasn’t living on Kamino anymore, and the Kaminoans had no authority, or opportunity to retrieve his DNA again.
Second, even if they could, they wouldn’t risk cloning a clone. That would be like making a copy of a copy, the genetic material would start to degrade over time. Kaminoans were perfectionists when it came to their cloning process, and they wanted the original, not a second-generation duplicate.
And finally, there’s the politics. By the time Jango’s DNA started failing, Kamino wasn’t really calling the shots anymore, Palpatine was. He was already tightening control over the cloning program, and the Kaminoans couldn’t just go out and pick a new donor without his approval.
Of course, this is where The Bad Batch adds an interesting layer, Omega. She’s another unaltered clone of Jango, just like Boba, but Nala Se protected her. She was too important to the Kaminoans’ private research to ever be used as a donor.
So in the end, Kamino had no way to get fresh Jango DNA, no permission to start over, and no pure samples left. They were stuck with what they had, and they knew the clock was ticking.
The Entire Grand Army Was Built Around Jango Fett
Another big reason the Kaminoans couldn’t just pick a new donor is because everything about the Grand Army of the Republic was built around Jango Fett — his body, his instincts, his skills, even his psychology.
From the armor design to the combat simulations, every aspect of clone training was engineered specifically to fit Jango’s build and abilities. The Kaminoans had studied him down to the smallest detail, his muscle structure, his reaction time, how he handled stress in battle, even the way he thought tactically.
That’s why the clones fight the way they do, that perfect balance of aggression and discipline, it’s all programmed from Jango’s genetic blueprint. Even their armor and gear were designed with his exact proportions and movement range in mind.
If the Kaminoans switched to a new donor, they wouldn’t just be swapping DNA. They’d have to redesign the entire army from the ground up, armor sizing, weapon calibrations, simulation algorithms, even the mental conditioning protocols that control loyalty and obedience. The GAR wasn’t just inspired by Jango; it was shaped around him.
And Jango wasn’t just any bounty hunter, he was a one-in-a-million soldier. Strong, fast, disciplined, but also intelligent enough to lead men and think independently when needed. His genetics gave the clones that same versatility, the ability to act as individuals while still functioning as a unit. That’s something Kamino’s scientists couldn’t easily replicate with another donor.
Palpatine’s Secret Backup Plan: The Zillo Beast Project
There’s another layer to this story, one that most fans overlook. The Kaminoans weren’t the only ones thinking about cloning when Jango Fett’s DNA started to fail. Palpatine was already planning something else.
To understand how early this plan began, you have to go back to The Clone Wars Season 2, specifically the Zillo Beast arc (“The Zillo Beast” and “The Zillo Beast Strikes Back”). These episodes take place after the Battle of Geonosis and well into the middle of the Clone Wars, around the same period when Kamino was still mass-producing clones from Jango’s template, but before Lama Su mentions the deteriorating DNA in Season 3’s “Clone Cadets.”
In those episodes, the Republic unleashes a massive electro-proton bomb on Malastare to end a long Separatist siege. The explosion cracks open the planet’s crust and awakens an ancient creature, the Zillo Beast, a towering reptilian monster with near-impenetrable scales that even lightsabers can’t cut. After seeing its armor shrug off Republic firepower, Palpatine orders the creature captured and transported to Coruscant for study.
On the surface, it seems like a simple military research order: find out how the beast’s hide can help the Republic build stronger armor for clone troopers or starships. But as the story unfolds, Palpatine’s real intentions become clearer, and darker. He doesn’t want the scientists to just study the creature. He tells them to clone it.
The Kaminoans never appear in this arc, but it’s heavily implied that Palpatine is already thinking beyond the current cloning program. While Lama Su and Nala Se are still refining Jango’s genetic material, Palpatine is quietly setting up his own path, experimenting with non-human DNA that could create stronger, more durable beings.
That’s the first real hint of what would later become the Imperial cloning initiative. Palpatine saw the limitations of the Kaminoan process and wanted a new kind of clone, something more powerful, more controllable, and less reliant on flawed human templates.
Years later, The Bad Batch confirms this. In Season 2, Episode 11 (“Metamorphosis”), we see that the Empire actually continued the Zillo Beast project long after the war ended. An Imperial transport carries a cloned Zillo Beast, proving that Palpatine’s old experiment never stopped. It had evolved into the secret research that would one day lead to Project Necromancer, the Snoke prototypes, and even Palpatine’s own resurrection attempts seen in The Rise of Skywalker.
So when the Kaminoans began worrying about Jango Fett’s failing DNA, they were already obsolete, they just didn’t know it yet. Palpatine had no reason to approve a new donor because he had already moved on. The future of cloning no longer belonged to Kamino’s scientists; it was in the Emperor’s hands.
