Star Wars fan theory on Snoke identity confirmed

If it was not clear before, we now have just about the most solid confirmation of Supreme Leader Snoke's true identity yet delivered by Lucasfilm. The Star Wars sequel trilogy, starting with Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens, showed a leader of the First Order that was massive, decrepit, and relatively strong with The Force. His "true identity" was effectively teased as one of the biggest payoffs in the history of Star Wars – but it was not to be.

In the film The Last Jedi, Snoke was struck down – shockingly. We'd barely gotten to know the guy, and bang! He was chopped! In the movie Rise of Skywalker, we get a BIT of an answer to where Snoke originated from – he's in the tanks. He's clearly been manufactured by the zombie corpse of Emperor Palpatine. But still, we were left to wonder, was he cloned? Was he made from scratch? Who was this guy supposed to be?

In an article released this week on the official Star Wars blog, from a series called Star Wars Inside Intel. This series has Lucasfilm Story Group member Emily Shkoukani collecting "obscure facts about Star Wars lore and continuity."

In the article called "Palpatine's Contingency Plan", Shkoukani writes the following: "Destiny, and the Contingency, would catch up to Rey in the form of the First Order, led by one of Palpatine's evil duplicates called Snoke."

There it is – confirmation that Snoke was, indeed, "one of Palpatine's evil duplicates." The article also confirms that Palpatine was, indeed, killed by Darth Vader on the second Death Star.

Once killed, "his consciousness transferred to a clone of his own body on Exegol but the body was too weak to contain him." The idea that Palpatine can send his consciousness from one body to another has been around since the old days – before Disney purged the past into Legend. Shkoukani went on, "This led to Palpatine creating more clones and strand-casts of himself in the hopes that one would offer a more suitable vessel for him to inhabit."

Per Shkoukani, Snoke was similar to the father of the character we know as Rey. "All of this effort ultimately culminated in Rey, the daughter of one of Palpatine's strand-casts." Imagine that!

SIDENOTE: Above you'll see a few panels from the canonical comic series Star Wars: Darth Vader (issue #11). In it, Darth Vader makes his way to Exegol to find Palpatine preparing for the future – this visit takes place between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.