Palpatine was a Clone in The Rise of Skywalker

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker had Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, returning. Throughout the movie's runtime there was no exposition about how this had happened. So viewers were left wondering how a character that was supposed to have died in The Return of the Jedi actually survived.

According to some of the novelization of The Rise of Skywalker that has been leaked: PALPATINE'S SOUL WAS LIVING INSIDE A CLONE THE ENTIRE TIME.

To a lot of people online, this revelation was shocking. To me, though, it was the only logical explanation for his return. We had seen Snoke clones at the start of the film so why wouldn't the most powerful Sith Lord use such a process to keep himself alive?

But maybe I'm so accepting of this explanation because I read a bunch of the old Expanded Universe back in the day.

More pressing questions are exactly how and when the cloning process was set up. If the novelization goes into those details, I would be more than ready to buy the book. Though, in any case, The Rise of Skywalker shouldn't have left such important details to be found out upon purchasing other books.