Everything We Know (and Think We Know) About Star Wars’ Project Necromancer

The idea of a Force sensitive clone isn’t at all surprising—it’s an idea that was explored repeatedly in Star Wars’ old Expanded Universe, and in contemporary canon we’ve known the potential is possible, considering that’s how Palpatine ultimately returned in Rise of Skywalker. But one interesting thing that Bad Batch has subtly brought to the fore in this mix that was lacking in the Expanded Universe’s exploration of the concept is that, well, clones are actually also as much their own people in the tapestry of the Force as they are copies of someone else.

Omega being Force sensitive while Jango Fett is not doesn’t mean anything in continuity; neither does the fact that Dathan could be made from Palpatine’s own genetic material and not inherit his power. Whereas in the old EU, in beings like the myriad clones of the Emperor in Dark Empire or—to keep things close to Mount Tantiss—clones like Luuke or Joruus C’baoth, cloning Force sensitivity was as easy as any other kind of cloning: it just kind of happened when you copy-pasted a being strong in the Force. This adds not just an individuality and humanity to clones in a way that very much works with what Bad Batch has been exploring about the life of the clone army after the Empire has run out of uses for it—it doesn’t matter who they are or who they were made out of, they too have this organic connection to the living beings of the whole galaxy on a spiritual level, and can grow to learn how to tangibly interact with that connection—it also helps sell the fact that what Palpatine was trying to do was hard, and desperate, and oddly pathetic.

The fact that it took him decades of tinkering with lavish secret experiments to even get the shriveled husk we see in Rise is a testament to that desperation, and something that makes centering Palpatine as the root of so many evils in Star Wars feel at least most dramatically interesting. The Force will work however it wants to, and speak to whoever it wants to, instead of being bent to an exact science and the will of a tyrannical monster. It’s a nice balance between the metaphorical hand grenade the existence of midi-chlorians brought with it 25 years ago, and an age-old ideal of Star Wars: that anyone can tap into this power with enough practice and will.