The Mandalorian's Snoke Easter Egg May Reveal How the First Order Leader Was Made

The fourth episode of The Mandalorian season two slipped in a Star Wars movie Easter egg I don't think any of us expected to see again: Snoke. Or at least a tank boy who looks a lot like Snoke, sitting among a row of creepy humanoid test subjects in an Imperial lab. They were supposedly hopeful recipients of Baby Yoda's midichlorian rich blood. I think this moment might have confirmed how Snoke fit into the timeline, and that tells us more about the First Order.

The Mandalorian (2019) stars Pedro Pascal. The Rise of Skywalker revealed that Snoke was a genetic strand cast, somewhere in the pipeline toward resurrecting Darth Sidious, or Palpatine. The cynical reality is that Snoke was a missed opportunity, caught in the crossfire of a studio and directors who weren't on the same page about who the ultimate villain of The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker was meant to be. Now Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau seem to be swooping in to explain who Snoke was.

How The Force Awakens introduced Snoke as Supreme Leader of the First Order

In The Force Awakens, Snoke was the Force sensitive ruler of the First Order, an emperor style hologram voiced and performed in motion capture by Andy Serkis. His origins were meant to be mysterious. He came from the Unknown Regions and wormed his way up the ranks of the First Order, bypassing its founders, Grand Admiral Rae Sloane and General Brendol Hux.

Brendol Hux was the father of Armitage Hux, the First Order general who committed the galaxy's worst war crimes and then subverted his whole life's work by becoming a spy for the Resistance. Snoke oversaw the First Order's construction of Starkiller Base on Ilum and the recruitment of child soldiers like Finn.

During that time he reached out to Ben Solo through the Force. He encouraged the young man's rebelliousness and independence, so that Ben would eventually turn on Luke Skywalker and burn down Luke's attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order.

The Last Jedi showed Snoke's anatomy, and then Kylo Ren killed him

The Last Jedi showed us a different side of Snoke. We saw his weird love of finery, his golden robes and his Sith jewelry. We also saw much more of his freaky anatomy: he's very tall, and he has that split in his head. The companion book suggested the scar was caused by a wound he suffered when he was younger.

None of that backstory seemed to matter, though, because Kylo Ren betrayed Snoke. He split him in half and proclaimed himself the new Supreme Leader of the First Order.

The Rise of Skywalker made Snoke a strand cast from Exegol

The opening minutes of The Rise of Skywalker redefined Snoke's backstory again. He was established as a clone strand cast, one of many copies incubated by Palpatine's scientists working on Exegol. That group is called the Sith Eternal, a cult of religious fanatics using gene splicing to preserve Darth Sidious and develop a new host body for him to live once more. They were never successful, and one of the failed tests was Palpatine's strand cast son.

When Kylo Ren arrived on Exegol, the ghostly voice of Palpatine explained it: "I made Snoke. I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head." So the voice of his grandfather Vader that Kylo prayed to in The Force Awakens, and the voice of Snoke that lured him away from Luke, were all Palpatine, according to Palpatine.

Why go to all that trouble? I guess you could say that if Palpatine approached young Ben Solo as himself, the Jedi trainee might immediately balk and shut him out. By approaching him as a morally clouded grandfather figure, or as a completely new stranger, he could use that new face to better manipulate Ben. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist, or that he was Darth Vader.

The Mandalorian suggests the Snoke experiments began long before Exegol

This episode suggests the genetic experiments that produced cloned Snokes did not begin on Exegol. They were part of an experiment dating back years earlier, around the time of The Mandalorian, when remnants of the Empire and scientists linked to the cloning facility on Kamino tried to harvest midichlorian rich blood from donors to inject into these strand cast bodies. Apparently all those attempts failed, but it's a start.

The clearest close up we got was a test subject that looks a lot like Snoke. Yes, it would be odd for this subject to already have the split in his head, when the companion book suggested Snoke got it as an injury.

But the question remains: what led to the future successful trial of Snoke? Did a Force sensitive, midichlorian rich donor give his or her life to make it happen? The Child, Ahsoka Tano maybe, or other Jedi figures like Ezra Bridger? And how do we reconcile this with the identity we came to know as Snoke, voiced by Andy Serkis? Was that Palpatine voicing and performing him all along?

My theory: Snoke was a failed host body Palpatine used as a proxy

I think we can surmise that Snoke was an independent identity, a strand cast created with the original intent of hosting Palpatine's spirit. But even after they created a successful, living, Force sensitive host body, Palpatine's consciousness didn't take. For whatever reason, it wasn't compatible.

So instead, Palpatine constructed a new identity in the body of Snoke, one he could control. It was an identity that would never know its true purpose, but one that could run the First Order and recruit Ben Solo, doing all of this as a proxy for Sidious.

Meanwhile, the Sith Eternal scientists kept splicing until they got something closer to a body resembling Sidious's original form. That way they could pick up with the Final Order after Kylo Ren inevitably overthrew Snoke.

How Palpatine 2.0 might differ from the Snoke clones

So what got them to Palpatine 2.0, beyond the Snoke clone body? I think that's what this season of The Mandalorian is going to explore further. Maybe the future of this tank boy on Nevarro would explain the different process behind Palpatine 2.0.

That difference could have been as simple as Baby Yoda's blood. Snoke could have been formed by splicing DNA from donors like that, but maybe that was as far as they could get with that line of testing. Palpatine might have been reformed by those scientists using slightly different means and different donors. Maybe they even found his broken corpse, recovered from the ruins of the second Death Star.

Moff Gideon could be the origin of the Sith Eternal

I think Moff Gideon's group could be the origin of the Sith Eternal and the Final Order. I used to think he could have been the origin of the First Order. But if the First Order was genuinely oblivious to its connection to Palpatine, I think Moff Gideon must be part of the faction that is aware of it.

The thing to keep in mind is that the Sith Eternal seem to be a group of hooded cultists interested in the Sith doctrine of Darth Sidious. Moff Gideon appears to be a military officer, more loyal to the Empire and the military might that Palpatine's Emperor identity represented. On the other hand, Gideon wields the Darksaber, which could tell us he is interested in the ways of the Sith and the Jedi beyond the military superiority they help secure.

We should also accept the possibility that Moff Gideon has his own agenda, maybe a restoration of Imperial military power and nothing more. He might be used as a pawn by darker forces like the Sith Eternal and Palpatine in ways he doesn't fully appreciate, and maybe he'll be cast aside when the time is right.

The bottom line is that Snoke's story is more involved with Star Wars history than a test tube creation from Exegol. His rise happened much earlier, in the transition between the Empire and the First Order. His rule was more complicated than that of a mere Palpatine puppet, and his death was more meaningful than its unflattering presentation would have you believe.