Check Out This Concept Art Featuring Kylo Ren And Palpatine’s Cloning Machines

It is no secret that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was a polarizing film.

While some fans loved the movie and felt that it was a worthy finale to the Skywalker saga, others felt that The Rise of Skywalker left out important plot lines, did a disservice to its characters, and was a disappointing conclusion overall.

There has been a significant amount of discussion in the wake of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's release regarding what the film could have been, and what choices were considered along the way. We have seen concept art for scenes that never made it into the movie, such as a scene where Rey faces off against hundreds of stormtroopers, and fans were even given access to what is supposedly Colin Trevorrow's original Star Wars: Episode IX script, entitled Duel of the Fates.

Over the months since the film's release, we have seen lots of bits and pieces of ideas for Episode IX that were, for whatever reason, discarded, and artist Adam Brockbank recently posted yet another piece of concept art that has stirred up conversation.

Early on in the film, Kylo Ren arrives on Exegol to confront Palpatine and witnesses the clone vats with copies of Snoke in them. We learn in this scene that Palpatine created Snoke and has even been communicating with Kylo Ren telepathically, as he says, "I have been every voice inside your head."

However, the vats we see in the film look significantly different from the one pictured in the above concept art, and in the film, Kylo Ren never goes up to the cloning vats or acknowledges them in such close proximity.

It is possible that this concept art is just an early version of the Snoke cloning vats, and that it does not imply anything beyond what the movie shows us. However, some deeper digging into the lore surrounding The Rise of Skywalker might reveal otherwise.

While the film mostly leaves Palpatine's survival a mystery, given that we are not really told how he returned, there are hints in the film -- and even more explicit statements in the novelization of the movie -- that reveal that this version of Palpatine is indeed a clone.

Palpatine has a line in the movie where he says he's "died before," which raises questions of his survival, and Dominic Monaghan's character has a line where he talks about "dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew."

In the novelization by Rae Carson, a passage reveals Palpatine's existence as a clone:

"All the vials were empty of liquid save one, which was nearly depleted. Kylo peered closer. He'd seen this apparatus before, too, when he'd studied the Clone Wars as a boy. The liquid flowing into the living nightmare before him was fighting a losing battle to sustain the Emperor's putrid flesh.

'What could you give me?' Kylo asked. Emperor Palpatine lived, after a fashion, and Kylo could feel in his very bones that this clone body sheltered the Emperor's actual spirit. It was an imperfect vessel, though, unable to contain his immense power. It couldn't last much longer."

Is it possible that this concept art hints at Kylo Ren encountering Palpatine's clone in an earlier form, or even perhaps another clone? You could even go so far as to speculate this concept art hints at Kylo Ren trying to create some sort of a clone of his own, though we do not know if there is any actual evidence for that.

It is cool to imagine alternate plotlines for the film, like what would have happened if we had explored Palpatine's origins more in-depth and talked about the cloning process within the movie. That being said, there is only so much that you can fit into a two-and-a-half-hour runtime, so it is understandable that this did not make it into the film. At this point, all fans can do is speculate with the concept art given, and know that there are more ideas on the horizon for future movies that may include more cool stuff like this.

Written By Alex Cherry

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