Star Wars: 10 Most Ridiculous Stories From The Expanded Universe
5. Clones, Clones, Everywhere Clones!
Clones play a large role in the Star Wars films, so it’s understandable that clones would pop up in the Expanded Universe. Clones were often used as a lazy way to drum up some intimidating villains. Unfortunately, this reliance on cloning ranged from hilarious ridiculous to crushingly banal.
Even critically lauded pieces of the EU like Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy were not immune to the curse of the clones. Even though Zahn’s trilogy was unofficially considered Episodes VII, VIII and IX, the big bad of those novels resorted to cloning Luke Skywalker from the hand he lost on Bespin. The clone was crazy and was called Luuke, because when you’re resorting to clones in the first place, originality isn’t much of a concern.
Quite possibly the worst offender of this clone craziness is the Dark Horse comic book series Dark Empire, which saw Emperor Palpatine transfer his consciousness into several cloned bodies, essentially negating everything our heroes triumphed over in the original films.
It also makes you wonder why the Emperor would wait to transfer his consciousness into one of these cloned bodies for so long. By the time Return of the Jedi rolls around the guy is ancient, a literal living fossil. Why he wouldn't just upload himself into a snazzy new body as soon as one was available is anyone's guess.