Warning! This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Bad Batch and The Mandalorian.Through Disney+ TV shows such as The Mandalorian and Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Star Wars is leaving various breadcrumbs that seem to be leading to the origins of Supreme Leader Snoke. Snoke was first introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the tyrannical, villainous leader of the First Order. While little was revealed about Snoke's history in that film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker offered major clues to Snoke's backstory.
Undoubtedly the biggest reveal about Snoke was that he was a puppet of the long-running Star Wars villain Emperor Palpatine. The Rise of Skywalker revealed Palpatine created multiple clones to serve his bidding, one of which being Andy Serkis' Snoke from Star Wars' sequel trilogy. Despite this background, the plot point was frustratingly underwritten, providing little detail about how exactly Palpatine's plan unfolded. Several years after the confusing twist, it seems that Star Wars' recent TV shows The Bad Batch and The Mandalorian are rising to the challenge of explaining Snoke and his links to Darth Sidious.
The Return Of The Zillo Beast Reminds Viewers Of Palpatine's Cloning Obsession
While not the first chronological hint towards Snoke/Palpatine through The Bad Batch or The Mandalorian, the return of the Zillo Beast may be the most important. In Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 2, episode 11, Clone Force 99 is sent to investigate a downed Imperial ship for some special cargo. There, the titular Bad Batch realizes that the cargo is alive in the form of a cloned Zillo Beast. This episode finally brings back a long-lost Clone Wars arc, surrounding Palpatine, the Zillo Beast, and most importantly, cloning.
In Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 2, episodes 18 and 19, the Zillo Beast was revealed as a creature that feeds on energy as a means of growing exponentially, with armor that can even withstand the power of a Jedi's lightsaber. As a result, Palpatine was shown to keep the Zillo Beast in captivity, part of a plan to clone the creature and use its strong armor to create the ultimate soldier. This plot point was missing from Star Wars until The Bad Batch, which sees Palpatine's cloning facility on Mount Tantiss housing the cloned Zillo Beasts.
While the true endgame of this storyline is yet to be seen, likely in The Bad Batch, the plot point still serves as a way to remind audiences of Palpatine's fascination with cloning. Be it the clone army introduced in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, the Zillo Beast, or Snoke in the sequels, Palpatine's tendency towards cloning has always been prevalent. With The Bad Batch shining a light on this, other elements of both The Bad Batch and The Mandalorian become clear as potential hints towards the bigger picture of Palpatine's plan.
The Bad Batch Season 1's Kamino Storyline Shows The Empire's Interest In Cloning
One of the more overarching hints of The Bad Batch that hints towards Snoke is season 1's focus on Kamino. With the Kaminoans being the sole proprietors of cloning in the galaxy shortly after the prequel trilogy, the newly-formed Empire began its plan to wrestle the control of cloning into the Emperor's own hands. This included swapping out clone troopers for Star Wars' stormtroopers, destroying Kamino's cloning facilities, and taking the world's head scientists under their control, all of which hinted at the Empire's growing interest in cloning.
One episode of The Bad Batch season 1,episode 9: "Bounty Lost," saw Omega exploring an abandoned cloning facility. There she finds plenty of clone prototypes, including one with strangely deformed features akin to Supreme Leader Snoke. While the overall story of The Bad Batch season 1 kept cloning in viewers' minds, this was the first proper hint to the origins of Snoke almost 60 years before his first appearance in-universe in The Force Awakens.
The Mandalorian Seasons 1 & 2 Highlight The Empire’s Obsession With Grogu
When concerning the other Star Wars Disney+ show that seems to be setting up Snoke, The Mandalorian, the majority of hints surround the character Grogu. In The Mandalorian season 1, episode 1's cliffhanger ending, Pedro Pascal's titular Mandalorian found a child of Yoda's rare species, later revealed to be named Grogu, a survivor of Order 66. Throughout both The Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2, the Empire was shown to covet Grogu, attempting to capture him at multiple points and hand him off to a cloning scientist, Dr. Pershing, who in The Mandalorian season 1, episode 3 was shown to don a Kaminoan cloning outfit.
The Mandalorian Season 2, Episode 4 Provides Major Smoke Hints
This plot point of the Empire attempting to take Grogu was finally given some context in The Mandalorian season 2, episode 4. In the episode, Mando offers to destroy an Imperial base left on Nevarro for the newly appointed magistrate Greef Karga, played by Carl Weathers. Upon arriving at the base, Mando realizes it is not a simple facility and finds pods of cloned bodies. There, Mando and his allies discover a recording from Dr. Pershing, who mentions his attempts at transfusing Grogu's blood into the subjects due to the former's high M-count - Midi-chlorians from George Lucas' prequel trilogy.
This reveal, combined with the mangled bodies of the clone test subjects, provided major hints towards Snoke being the endgame of The Mandalorian's story. The Empire attempting to steal a highly Force-sensitive child in Grogu and transfer his Midi-chlorians into another subject only further supports this. It is likely the Imperial Remnants are on orders from Palpatine to create Force-sensitive clones of himself, leading to Snoke and the version of Palpatine seen in The Rise of Skywalker.
The Bad Batch Season 2’s Mount Tantiss Provides More Evidence For Snoke
Returning to the world of Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 2 - which interestingly ran concurrently with The Mandalorian season 3 - the series introduced Mount Tantiss. While this facility briefly appeared in season 1 of The Bad Batch, it was showcased more thoroughly in the aforementioned The Bad Batch season 2, episode 11 "Metamorphosis". Tantiss is depicted as the home base of the Imperial's cloning facility, in which The Bad Batch's Kaminoan scientist Nala Se is shown to be held. The Zillo Beasts are also stored in this facility.
In The Bad Batch season 2, episode 11, Nala Se admits she will not help the Empire by continuing her work, as she is aware of what Palpatine has planned. This once again hints towards his post-Return of the Jedi contingency involving cloning. With the Empire now solely controlling cloning, holding Kaminoan scientists, and Palpatine seemingly having larger plans, the appearance of Mount Tantiss only contributes to the overwhelming evidence raised by The Bad Batch toward Snoke's emergence. Interestingly, Mount Tantiss was also the home of Thrawn’s cloning facility in the now-Legends book Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn.
All The Snoke Hints In The Mandalorian Season 3, Episode 3
The most recent piece of evidence of Snoke's emergence comes in The Mandalorian season 3, episode 3. This episode sees the return of Omid Abtahi's Dr. Pershing, who now works for the New Republic after being rehabilitated and reintegrated into society following his former service to the Empire. In Pershing's opening scene in The Mandalorian season 3, episode 3, he is shown to be giving a speech on Coruscant surrounding his prior cloning work.
Pershing's speech mentions that his work was twisted by an individual who coveted more power for himself through the usage of cloning technology. This is an obvious hint to Palpatine and the work Pershing did revolving around Grogu in The Mandalorian seasons 1 and 2. The Mandalorian's Dr. Pershing then goes on to explain that his work differed from the Kaminoans, in that he explored the hope of combining genetic codes from multiple donors to create a clone exhibiting these attributes, as opposed to replicating the same identical DNA strand as was utilized by the Kaminoans.
This provides an explanation for Grogu. It becomes clear that Pershing attempted to combine Grogu's attributes, likely his Force-sensitivity, with another subject in order to create a Force-sensitive clone. This all but confirms that the Empire is trying to create Palpatine's clones already, which will likely lead to the creation of Supreme Leader Snoke, kickstarting the events of the Star Wars sequel trilogy after the hints found throughout Star Wars: The Bad Batch and The Mandalorian.