With Kylo Ren tho, given that Palpatine never seemed interested in inhabiting Ren at all, despite him having more potential than even himself, just seemed to rule out Kylo Ren as being a special case entirely, which I just assumed had something to do with him being a Skywalker.
Whereas Snoke was a strandcast like Rey's father(only force sensitive and, well, deformed), created specifically for Palpatine to use as a vessel. And since the novel points out that Rey was the perfect vessel strong enough to hold his essence, unlike any of the strandcasts, it just seemed to me to imply that the strandcasts simply were not strong enough.
However, there may very well be another reason why he chose not to (or couldn't) inhabit Snoke, which is why I'm not depending solely on that to support my opinion that Snoke isn't = ROTJ Palpatine.
Snoke is confirmed to be weaker than undead Palpatine, who is most likely weaker than he was in ROTJ due to being stuck in a vessel that is unable to access the full extent of his power the way his original body could.
__________________ "The power of the dark side is an illness no true Sith would wish to be cured of" -Darth Plagueis
Based on TROS making it clear Palpatine was Snokes superior the whole time.
So we are to believe that Palpatine in his broken clone body > ROTJ Palpatine, simply to align what we know now with a single statement in Lukes journal written pre-TROS.
Not to mention Luke could just be wrong on that.
Last edited by Darth Thor on Jan 10th, 2021 at 03:49 PM
But then you have the excerpt from the novel, where Palpatine states that he had made the very same proposal to Luke in RotJ that he was making to Rey in RoS(ie. "strike me down, my essence will pass into you, etc.") So IF Palpatine was indeed capable of transferring his essence into Luke, then he should have certainly been able to hop into Kylo as well.
Jfc. Forgot how much of a mess this novel is, lol.
Right, but we know that Snoke was also an extremely mutated/deformed strandcast, so that could be why he was unusable as a vessel for Palpatine.
Almost seemed like very precise genetic elements had to be in place in order for Palpatine to successfully transfer his essence into a host body. Either that, or he was only willing to hop into a "perfect" vessel because he didn't want to risk being displeased with a less-than-perfect host body, and risk having to go through the transference ritual again later on.
In this case, Palpatine knew that a "perfect" vessel(ie. Rey) was out there, and also knew that he had enough time to wait for her to surface... Why settle for a crippled leper if you don't absolutely HAVE to?
Yeah, it's hard to say because we don't know one way or the other.
I personally think the undead Palpatine clone's power was > what it was during RotJ, but was obviously weaker physically.
...But that's mainly because it's hard for me to imagine Palpatine's power(in any state) not increasing to some extent over the course of decadeS. /shrug
Luke indicated that Snoke's power was equal to Sidious's. This should be referring to ROTJ Sidious, since that's the last time Luke had personally encountered and sensed him.
So Snoke = ROTJ Sidious in power.
Then Snoke himself later said that he respected and FEARED Luke. Snoke would not FEAR a being who was weaker then himself.
So ST Luke>Snoke=ROTJ Sidious.
Then when Kylo sensed the power of undead Sidious, he stated it was beyond anything he had ever encountered before.
Because the deteriorated state of his body doesn't mean he had less power then before. Physical appearance and power are two different things.
Kylo even states that the cloud of darkness swelling around undead Sidious "belied any sense of frailty".
To be honest, I'm not even sure if Sidious actually became more powerful after absorbing the dyad from Rey and Ben. I think his body was just restored. So he basically had the same power as before, but his body had been healed and no longer needed life support.
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Last edited by Sheev on Jan 10th, 2021 at 05:12 PM
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Pics were posted, but I'm pretty sure the Star Wars Book only says something about the dyad just "healing" Sidious's body or something along those lines. Dont think it mentions his power being amped by the dyad.
Yeah but why would any of that mean hes substantially more powerful to the point where ROTJ Sidious (the guy who casually owns Vader) could now just be his lackey ?
Im guessing Snoke was intended to be Palpatines equal until they retconned shit so that Palpatine was still alive and Snoke his lackey.
That aside, theres just so many reasons why Luke could have been wrong given the mystery around Snoke and how much of his powers were his own, and how much of what he was doing was actually Palpatine. And probably never feeling ROTJ Palpatines full power in the first place.
And if Luke didnt know Palpatine was alive, then hes clearly not all knowing despite him talking to Force Ghosts.
Because Luke's journal note isn't retconned just because you don't think it fits?
Luke indicated that Snoke's power was equal to Sidious's. Kylo sensed that undead Sidious's power was greater then anything he'd ever experienced.
So based on 2 canon pieces of info, undead Sidious > Snoke = ROTJ Sidious.
There's also no reason to think that Sidious couldn't have become more powerful in the 30 years between ROTJ and ROS, just because his body was a wreck. Sure you could say that becoming more powerful might have sped up the deterioration process of his clone body, but we don't know to what extent.
Like if Sidious's power was a 10 in ROTJ when he essence transferred, and his power increased to a 15 by ROS, it's impossible to say how much that added power would have progressed his rotting. Hell, maybe the life support goop that was being pumped into him on Exegol was able to help compensate for the added deterioration he might have been experiencing due to his power increasing?
What I'm saying is- we really don't have any reason at all to think his power had decreased, just because of the state of his clone body. Like I said before- physical appearance and power are two different things.
Because the RoS novelization seems to imply that Palpatine's heretics didn't start attempting to create additional clone strandcasts until after Palpatine had originally transferred his essence into the imperfect clone vessel on Exegol:
And per The Star Wars Book, we know for sure that Snoke is indeed classified as a "genetic strandcast", and is further defined as a "genetically engineered proxy for Sidious."
So in spite of the dialogue from the TFA novelization(wherein Snoke claims to have seen the Empire rise and fall), it would now *seem* as though he was created at some point in the post-RotJ era.
Jan 10th, 2021 03:05 PM
