In the years and stories following 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the Star Warsfranchise has worked to explain how Emperor Palpatine's resurrection came to be with Project Necromancer. First identified in The Mandalorian season 3, Project Necromancer has since been fleshed out in Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 3, identifying Doctor Royce Hemlock as the lead scientist responsible for figuring out how Palpatine could make his return from the dead via cloning. The timeline of this project, however, has remained in flux - but its starting point has at last been identified.
In the new Star Wars Encyclopedia, it's revealed that Palpatine sought to begin his cloning contingency plan for survival partway through the events of The Bad Batch, putting things into motion around the time Kamino was destroyed by Vice Admiral Edmon Rampart. Using Rampart as his scapegoat, Palpatine was able to secretly appoint Hemlock as the chief scientist responsible for Project Necromancer at Mount Tantiss on Wayland, quietly moving all cloning operations from the Kaminoans to the Empire. This means the timeline of Project Necromancer has moved closer to The Bad Batch season 1 than previously thought.
On the whole, Project Necromancer has become a fascinating way for Star Wars to fully explain how Palpatine's resurrection came to be, and has done so with some incredible storytelling in both The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch. As for its timeline, identifying the starting point of this Imperial project allows viewers to understand not only how important this contingency plan was to Palpatine, but also to have an idea of how long this grueling process was - thus explaining why it took so long for Palpatine to reveal himself again. Nothing about Project Necromancer was ever simple.
Our Take On Project Necromancer
There Are Still Many Unanswered Questions
While Star Wars has currently taken large steps to explain Project Necromancer in The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch, there are still many questions left about it and its full timeline, particularly between these two TV shows. The Bad Batch season 3's ending reveals that Clone Force 99 put an end to Project Necromancer for the time being by effectively destroying parts of Tantiss and killing Hemlock. Governor Tarkin then instructed the Empire to instead divert Tantiss' resources to Project Stardust, leaving Project Necromancer's fate undetermined.
Beginning in Attack of the Clones, cloning has been an essential part of Star Wars history ever since, going all the way up to Emperor Palpatine.
What, then, did Palpatine do after this facility on Wayland was decommissioned, and his chief scientist was killed - and all his research was destroyed? There are certainly still many stories left to tell about this key project, but those seeds have just been planted, which very well means that more stories will fill in the gaps over time. It could even be revealed that Grogu has been a desirable target for this project for even longer than audiences think. Either way, there's plenty of potential left for Star Wars regarding Project Necromancer, though knowing its beginning is a good start.
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