If they're actually going to do that Emperor cloning himself plotline from Dark Empire, it could actually answer a lot of questions and wrap the series up in a pretty bow.

Who was Snoke?
He was a clone the Emperor was controlling. The cloning process is a bit imperfect, hence his appearance. Plus the Dark Side ravages the body.

How did the First Order amass so much military power?
The Emperor's cloning facility was a on a secret planet called Byss. It was in the deep center of the galaxy, and was difficult to get to even if you knew about it. It had tons of secret weapons and resources. So Byss could have been the staging point for the First Order to secretly rebuild its forces over the years, and then launch a surprise campaign against the unsuspecting New Republic.

How do you end the movie?
Our heroes go to Byss (or whatever planet JJ has made), and destroy the cloning facility so the Emperor is denied his immortality. Then you destroy the remaining First Order military. Not sure how that part happens...

I like it, for the most part. It would also explain the secret base Muck mentioned.

But how do the clones work in Dark Empire? Because actual, literal clones seem kind of dumb. I like the idea mentioned earlier of them being clone bodies without a "soul," so to speak, and thus Palpatine's original "soul" is able to jump from body to body. But if they're actual, fully functioning clones of Palpatine with their own thoughts and lives and memories and what not - and the original version of Palpatine is truly dead and gone - I'm not at all interested in seeing Palpatine 2.0, 3.0. 4.0, etc., which would, for all intents and purposes, be completely new characters.

That said, if there's any truth at all to this clone angle, yeah, Snoke has to be part of it in some way. He looked too f*cked up and weird to not in some way have been raised from the dead or a clone or something.

Zombie Jon Snow said:

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TCTTS said:

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(Bonus question... if it IS Endor, does this mean Ewoks???)

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please NO!!!!!

but if we have to have anything like that I'll take (brief) Ewoks over Jar Jar any day.

but if they go all gaga over C-3PO again I'm gonna lose it.

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Maybe it's Endor, but the Ewoks have since been wiped out by some other battle or something.

They were clone bodies without a soul. So yes, Palpatine's original "soul" was able to jump from body to body. He retained all his memories and powers.

An important point is that they were perfect clones of Palpatine's body, so they all looked like him. Snoke doesn't look like Palpatine. I guess they could write it into the script that the knowledge for cloning has been partially lost? Hence why Snoke looked the way he did.

They obviously were moved to another planet and opened up casinos in canto bight

Ok, good to know.

So, the basic plot for the movie COULD be...

- In the absence of Snoke, Palpatine re-emerges to the shock of our heroes. This is not *just* a Force ghost, but a living, breathing iteration of Palpatine.

- Via Luke's Force ghost or perhaps some other character, our heroes learn that Palpatine has a secret base where Palpatine clones exists, where his soul can jump from clone to clone.

- The coordinates of this secret base are on the fallen, sunken, second Death Star, which our heroes manage to find.

- In order to defeat Palpatine once and for all, our heroes must then not only face and destroy Palpatine, but destroy his secret clone facility as well.

- Throughout all of this, Snoke's existence will somehow be explained, and we MIGHT get some additional explanation for Rey as well (she could be part-clone, etc.)

That said, If any of this is even remotely accurate...

- If Palpatine has a 40-year-old secret cloning facility, where has he been this entire time?

- Why did it take him 30 years to re-emerge?

- Is he secretly responsible for the First Order? Or did he have nothing to do with it?

- Why not simply re-emerge in a new body immediately after ROTJ and lead the eventual resurgence himself?

TCT said:

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If any of this is even remotely accurate,...

- If Palpatine has a 40-year-old secret cloning facility, where has he been this entire time?

- Why did it take him 30 years to re-emerge?

- Is he secretly responsible for the First Order? Or did he have nothing to do with it?

- Why not simply re-emerge in a new body immediately after ROTJ and lead the eventual resurgence himself?

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The explanation for this in Dark Empire (love that name) was that it took years for the Emperor to "reconstitute" his soul after his surprise death. It's basically what happened to Sauron in the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring - the ring was cut off his hand and his body was destroyed, but his spirit wasn't. And it took him centuries to "pull himself together" to take the form of a giant flaming eye spirit thing.

Dark Empire was a great couple of comics.

Gotcha. I can dig that. You and Karrde seem to be on basically the same page.

Dark Empire is mentioned, as are other potential stories that could be adapted in some way for TROS. Some pretty interesting stuff...

So you guys have just proposed to make the plot of the new movie a mashup of all the Harry Potter books..

Also, the Ewoks all died after the remains of the Death Star crashed into their planet and made it unlivable.

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html

Did Westworld Season 2 steal material from Dark Empire? Clones that you transfer your soul into, developed after many many many many failures.

Render said:

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Karrde said:

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In the old canon, there was a theory that forced fast growth of clones led to mental instabilities. I.e. you could mass produce unstable cannon fodder in a couple years, but if you wanted a true 1:1 copy of yourself you needed to give it 1:1 growth. (There was a mental imager sort of tech that could imprint a clone. You let it grow in a tank for X years, then imprint it)

Part of the old Thrawn trilogy books was that Thrawn figured out that the force was involved in warping the fast clones, and figured out how to cut them off from the force using ysalimiri (think alien sloth type creatures) and thus mass produce clone troopers of high quality quickly.

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Remember when Thrawn used cloaked asteroids to blockade Coruscant? Such great writing! Good times...

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A small number of cloaked asteroids hidden amongst many more tractor beam launches so the New Republic didn't know how many there were.

Okay so I'm very, very low on the Star Wars knowledge totem pole so sorry if this is a dumb question.

One handed Luke fell down a huge pit and survived just fine. Why couldn't Palpatine have as well? I get that there was an explosion but he was also shooting force lightning while falling, so it's not like he couldn't have blown a ton of stuff up on the way down.

Also, Palpatine sat back in the Senate and had no problem biding his time. If anything, it seems more common for the Sith lords to rule from afar in the shadows than to be with the frontline group anyway.

Again, maybe these are dumb musings but they seem a lot less convoluted, though granted not at all rooted in non movie canon that you all seem to know.

So we're basically going for the plot of Altered Carbon meets Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? I can dig it.

I think all of that is way too complicated to show on screen, but I like where everybody's head's at.

If Palpatine's voice is in the movie, all I can think it might be is another force vision. Like maybe if they enter ruins of the Death Star. Like how Rey had a vision involving things she knew nothing about in TFA.

Quad Dog said:

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The Palpatine laugh has to be a misdirection from the studio. The evidence is this thread. The last few pages have all been full movies about secret bases, clones, and Palpatine. Meanwhile no one has mentioned how Kylo, Knights of Ren, First Order, and like 12 existing rebels fits into any of those movies.

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I agree. I really doubt Palpatine or any incarnation of him is actually in the movie. Back history? Sure.

At least I hope so because this is starting to border on the absurd.

you may be on to something... one of the trailers for TFA had Luke saying "the force runs strong in my family, my father has it, I have it, my sister has it, you have that power too". .... and what a misdirection that was!

after watching the endgame leak, i'm taking avengers as the box office champ for 2019

I think you could also argue the Knights of Ren have been a misdirection from the very beginning, for all the talk about them we literally haven't even seen them except in a force vision from Rey.

bobinator said:

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I think you could also argue the Knights of Ren have been a misdirection from the very beginning, for all the talk about them we literally haven't even seen them except in a force vision from Rey.

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I think more of a disjointed story arc from Lucasfilm than a misdirection.