Thomas Bacon of Screenrant is at least willing to point out that the novelization of the Rise of Skywalker does manage to fill a few very big plot holes that the movie didn’t have the time to address or wasn’t designed to explain. But if anyone was thinking that the revelation that Palpatine was a clone was bound to make the movie better then they were likely disappointed since this is something that some folks might have already been guessing at. It’s not too hard to think of actually since no matter what, Palpatine being flung down a shaft into the Death Star was pretty hard to sell when it came to his survival. But clones, that’s something from the old canon (yes, cherry-picking again) that a lot of people have known about for years. It’s also the only real way that Palpatine could have survived, but the downfall is, as many have mentioned, the dark side takes a horrible toll on a physical body. This is after all why so many Sith appear rather sickly as they grow in power, the corrupted Force energy is continuously eating away at their bodies, and a clone body that’s never had the opportunity to grow and absorb the Force in such massive quantities as Sheev had in his first and most natural life was bound to deteriorate just a bit faster.
Clones are not an uncommon thing in Star Wars, and like it or not, the first mention of them was in A New Hope since Obi-Wan did mention the Clone Wars. The first actual use of them however came earlier when it was revealed in Dark Empire that Palpatine had cloned himself and that the Force was not burning out the clone the way it had done to his first body. Thankfully one of Palpatine’s biggest failings is that he’s extremely confident in his abilities and the only sacrifices he knows how to make are those that lead towards more power. He’s been a seriously powerful individual in the Star Wars franchise, but it’s always fun to see where he lands on the scale pertaining to the level of power that each Sith lord holds. Rui Carreira of Reel Rundown has a list of those Sith that are considered the most powerful, and while Sheev did make number two on the list, it’s easy to understand why, since the spirit of Exar Kun, a Sith from the Expanded Universe canon, was powerful enough to hang around as a spirit for centuries after his time and continue to plague those Luke had gathered to create a new Jedi Order.
One might think of crediting such Sith as Darth Nihulus, who was almost the equivalent of Marvel’s Galactus, without the need to destroy entire worlds to absorb their Force energy. He and Darth Sion were actually responsible for their own Jedi Purge in their time after betraying their fellow Sith, Darth Traya, who helped them become so powerful. The legacy of the Sith however is to betray even as it is to learn and to be impassioned about their studies in the Force. Sheev was one of those that accepted the knowledge he was given and then used it in any way he could to better himself, to gain more power, and to insure that in the long-run he would be the one still standing. That’s why this revelation of him being a clone isn’t exactly a revelation, but instead a way of admitting that Palpatine could very well still be around considering that, if anyone has been paying attention, he’s played the long game for quite some time now. He’s used clones of Snoke as puppets, he’s manipulated the First Order into being, and he’s known about his granddaughter for a while by the time ROS rolls around. One might wonder why he didn’t act sooner and where in the hell he got the materials for his star destroyers and how he kept everything on the down low for so long, but the ultimate deus ex machina in the movie is that he’s a SITH, and the most powerful Sith in the galaxy at that point, which means that he’s able to do a number of things that others can, such as command the loyalty of those that would do anything they could to prepare a fleet of planet-killing star destroyers that would be ready to go at his command. Yes, I really don’t care for the deus ex machina in this one, but I do appreciate that Palpatine, as devious and nasty as he is, still remains the kind of character that plans for just about any eventuality.
That’s why it feels as though his part in the story shouldn’t be completely done yet, though bringing him back at this time would be tiresome.
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