![Palpatine Was A Clone In The ‘Rise of Skywalker’ & More! [Canon]](https://thathashtagshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Emperor-clones.jpg)
What is old is new again. The Disney era of Star Wars has found a crutch. Whatever can’t be explained in a movie can easily be fixed with further explanation in accompanying novels, comics and other story-telling medium. That appears to be the approach of the newest revelation from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker novelization: The Emperor Palpatine we saw on screen was a clone. On one hand, it’s great to have such depth in a film that requires multiple layers and mediums to tell the story. Star Wars overflows with those backstory tales told behind the scenes. On the other hand, it goes down the dark path of chaotic story delivery.
Palpatine rehash: Star Wars Legends: Dark Empire
In a world of instant gratification and fan petitions to get what you want, many long-time Star Wars fans are angry because of the Expanded Universe jettison from canon. Read this twice and hear it for the truth it is: Lucasfilm and Disney were right to cut the EU loose. Be honest here; there were conflicting story lines, characters in different places at the same time, and messy story lines that didn’t align with other books. The EU was a chaotic mess in multiple arcs.
Is the Star Wars fandom “toxic”?
In other places however, it was the best gold mine of Star Wars stories in the galaxy. Tom Veitch’s Dark Empire series was a great arc that told of the Emperor surviving in a clone body that could actually support his dark side spirit and not decay. George Lucas was such a huge fan of this story arc, he gave it out as Christmas gifts to Lucasfilm employees upon release. He said it was the closest thing to his own ideas of the sequel he’d ever read. There is zero doubt that The Rise of Skywalker borrowed the ideas of deteriorating clone bodies for Palpatine from Dark Empire.
C2E2: TRoS Novelization sneak peek
Fans attending C2E2 in Chicago this weekend had the opportunity to get an early copy of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker novel by Rae Carson, and passages quickly showed up online, giving away some of the details inside. The biggest one so far is the official word that the Palpatine we saw with Kylo Ren on Exegol was indeed a clone, made using similar technology the Kaminoans used to make the Clone Army.
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.”
from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker novel by Rae Carson
Essentially, the reason Palpatine finally revealed himself was because he was going to die (for real this time) if he didn’t get a vessel that could contain his dark side essence. In his view, that powerful vessel was Rey. She is his flesh and blood after all. It had to be her.
Find out more about Palpatine in the TRoS novel, and learn where to pre-order it here.
Well Hashtaggers, it’s a sad thing none of this now-canon information was included in the movie. Personally, I would rather have a 3 or 4-hour Star Wars finale that tied up the entire tale on-screen. I like to read, and I loved the EU, but here’s where we split. Fans shouldn’t have to go back a read books to fill in gaping plot holes unless they want to. It should not be a requirement if you want the whole story. This revelation will likely fire up the fandom again over the validity of the EU and why Disney dropped it.
This does clear up a plot hole. The biggest question fans had from the day the first trailer dropped was how did Palpatine survive? There were plenty of clues in the background of that scene indicating cloning —the big jar of Snoke bodies was one). Book-reading fans will be rewarded with that confirmation and other minor easter eggs. For the casual movie-going fan, The Rise of Skywalker ripped them off of a complete journey through the tale on screen.
All your Star Wars news resides here, at That Hashtag Show, so stick with us! To learn more about Star Wars, you can also visit the official website at www.starwars.com.
Sourced from: ScreenRant
The Expanded Universe was never canon. Let’s see what George Lucas said about Palpatine being a Clone in canon.
“And now there have been novels about the events after Episode VI, which isn’t at all what I would
have done with it. The Star Wars story is really the tragedy of Darth Vader. That is the story. Once
Vader dies, he doesn’t come back to life, the Emperor doesn’t get cloned and Luke doesn’t get
married.”
~ George Lucas,Total Film Magazine Interview, 2008
https://ibb.co/x5q1RrQ
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Let’s see some other things Lucas said about the Expanded Universe.
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“I get asked all the time, ‘What happens after “Return of the Jedi”?,’ and there really is no answer for that,” he said. “The movies were the story of Anakin Skywalker and Luke Skywalker, and when Luke saves the galaxy and redeems his father, that’s where that story ends.””
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, May 2008, “George Lucas: ‘Star Wars’ won’t go beyond Darth Vader”, interview with Los Angeles Times
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“I don’t read that stuff, I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try and keep it consistent. The way I do it is they have a Star Wars encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it and see if it has already been used. When I said other people could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have TWO universes: My Universe and than this other one. They try to make THEIR universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions.”
~ George Lucas Starlog Magazine Interview, 2005 – https://ibb.co/Km1CcNs
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”The novels and comic books are other authors’ interpretations of my creation. Sometimes, I tell them what they can and cant do, but I just don’t have the time to read them. They’re not my vision of what Star Wars is.”
~ George Lucas, 2004
https://ibb.co/4gSjpjN
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“I like to refer to the Interview with Lucas in the Special Editions.When asked about the novels and what not, he simply says:
”Those are another author’s interpretation of what I’ve created, and not to be taken seriously, as far as what is really going on in the Star Wars world.”
~ George Lucas, appeared on StarWars.com in April, 2004
https://ibb.co/5RT1RSD
https://ibb.co/7XQ4n11
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“Q: What do you think of the expanded universe of books?
A: The books are in a different universe. I’ve not read any of them, and I told them when they started writing I wouldn’t read any of them and I blocked out certain periods.”
~ George Lucas – “The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy”
(report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurr
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“I don’t even read the offshoot books that come out based on Star Wars.”
~ George Lucas, Flannelled One, July 1999 – Film Night interview
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“The question selected from The Furry Conflict poll was: How much does the Expanded Universe influence the movies?
As I asked him, Lucas leaned back a moment and said to me “Very little.” When he first had agreed to let people write Expanded Universe books, he had said “I’m not gonna read ‘em” and it was a “different universe” that he wanted to keep away from the time period of his saga. He jokingly complained, however, that now when he writes a script he has to look through an encyclopedia to make sure that a name he comes up with doesn’t come too close to something in the EU.”
– “Marc Xavier”, November 2003, “The Furry Conflict and the Great ‘Beard‘ of the Galaxy”
(report based on a Q&A session with George Lucas which occurred at USC on 11-19-03)
https://ibb.co/SdFPkqH
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“George Lucas says there has never been any war between the Jedi and the Sith in his Star Wars Canon” – An excerpt from StarWars.com‘s oral history of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace:
Everybody said, “Oh, well, there was a war between the Jedi and the Sith.” Well, that never happened. That’s just made up by fans or somebody. What really happened is, the Sith ruled the universe for a while, 2000 years ago. Each Sith has an apprentice, but the problem was, each Sith Lord got to be powerful. And the Sith Lords would try to kill each other because they all wanted to be the most powerful. So in the end they killed each other off, and there wasn’t anything left.
“But anyway, there’s a whole matrix of backstory that has never really come out. It’s really just history that I gathered up along the way. It’s all based on backstories that I’d written setting up what the Jedi were, setting up what the Sith were, setting up what the Empire was, setting up what the Republic was, and how it all fit together I never really got a chance to explain the Whills part.”
George Lucas’ vision of the galaxy’s ancient times is clearly different from the Expanded Universe. Many wars between Jedi and Sith in the Old Republic era were told in games, books and comics. The current Lucasfilm’s canon didn’t explore this era yet.’
https://naboonews.wordpress.com/2019/05/25/george-lucas-says-there-has-never-been-any-war-between-the-jedi-and-the-sith-in-his-canon/
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“I think people over emphasize the importance of the canon level. The intent of the canon levels was, as the main intent was ‘if someones looking for the ships from a film, they can than use those fields to check for them only in the films,and thus seperate that from what was in the EU. So we can look at it case by case. I think there is an over emphasis of what those fields mean and what they represent”.
~ Leland Chee, Continuity Database Adminstrator for Lucas Licensing
“That ‘level of canon’ thus helps in terms of bookkeeping. Those ‘canon levels’ are for the holocron.”
~ Pablo Hidalgo
ForceCast #273: The Galaxy Is Reading – Interview with Leland Chee and Pablo Hidalgo, 2013 Approximately the 1 hour mark so 1:00 – 1:02 mark
https://thathashtagshow.com//www.forcecast.net/story/home/ForceCast_273_The_Galaxy_Is_Reading_154431.asp
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‘In 2014, Disney declared the Expanded Universe was no longer canon. It became ‘Legends’. What do you think of this, seeing all of your work suddenly become non-canon?’
“Those of us writing the EU were always told, all along, from the very beginning (have I stressed that strongly enough?), “Only the Movies are Canon.” Sure, it was disappointing.”
~ Kathy Tyers, EU author [Truce at Bakura, Balance Point] Interview, 2018
https://thathashtagshow.com//starwarsinterviews.com/various/authors/kathy-tyers-author/
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Podcast Interview with Steve Perry, Author of Shadows of the Empire from the Expanded Universe –
Interviewer – ‘So what are your thoughts about your book and all the ones that came other than this last year are no longer part of the Official Star Wars Canon ever since Disney took over?
Steve Perry – “Ohh they never were! Nothing was ever canon other than the movies.”
The Ritual Misery Podcast with hosts Amos and Kent, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2569&v=opbMcVJolSA&feature=emb_logo
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“What George did with the films and The Clone Wars was pretty much his universe ,” Chee said. “He didn’t really have that much concern for what we were doing in the books and games. So the Expanded Universe was very much separate.”
~ Leland Chee, Continuity Database Adminstrator for Lucas Licensing, SYFY WIRE Fandom Files #13 Interview,Jan.2018
https://ibb.co/r2SvbBP
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“There’s this notion that everything changed when everything became Legends. And I can see why people think that. But, you know, having worked with George I can tell you that it was always very clear — and he made it very clear — that the films and the TV shows were the only things that he considered Canon. That was it.”
Dave Filoni interview on ‘The Star Wars show’ [41.40 mark]-
https://youtu.be/hcNXPNXOv2A?t=2500
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“But Lucas allows for an Expanded Universe that exists parallel to the one he directly oversees. […] Though these [Expanded Universe] stories may get his stamp of approval, they don’t enter his canon unless they are depicted cinematically in one of his projects.”
~ Pablo Hidalgo, Star Wars: The Essential Reader’
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“While Lucasfilm always strived to keep the stories created for the EU consistent with our film and television content as well as internally consistent, Lucas always made it clear that he was not beholden to the EU. He set the films he created as the canon. This includes the six Star Wars episodes, and the many hours of content he developed and produced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These stories are the immovable objects of Star Wars history, the characters and events to which all other tales must align.”
~ Lucasfilm, 2014
https://www.starwars.com/news/the-legendary-star-wars-expanded-universe-turns-a-new-page