Okay, let’s talk a little about how cloning actually works. Today, irl, there are two ways to clone a mammal. The first is identical (monozygotic) twins, who are clones of each other but not the parent. Obviously that’s not what the Kaminoans did. The other way is to take an egg cell, scoop out the nucleus (eta: chromosomes, not nucleus, misspoke) (which is, if you remember your seventh-grade sex ed, only half of the genetic information needed to make a baby), and swap in the nucleus of a cell from an adult, which then trundles along happily dividing and such. HOWEVER, unless Jango has ovaries (unlikely given few to no visibly female clones, cis or otherwise), he can’t supply 100% of the clones’ DNA.
Why? It’s our old pal the mitochondria! [pause for meme] The mitochondria (mitochondrium? I’m not tabbing out, tumblr keeps eating this draft) is actually outside the nucleus, and is inherited matrilineally. It can’t be taken out during the cloning process, so by necessity the mitochondria of a clone is always from the egg donor, not the gene donor. (I suppose if Jango had any handy female relatives they could’ve used theirs, but oops, they’re all dead.)
But this is Star Wars, so let’s say the Kaminoans have some way to get around this problem. We’ve only been cloning mammals for like half a century, they’re way ahead of us. Fine. All the clones of Jango are 100% genetically identical to Jango. Now let’s talk about the difference between genotype and phenotype.
Genotype is your actual genetics, y'know, those charts with the BB and Bb that teach some poor schmuck in every class that their mom cheated because otherwise their eye color is impossible. Phenotype is how those genes express themselves physically – for instance, a random mutation that inhibits pigment production in the iris, leading to a blue-eyed child of brown-eyed parents.
(Personal anecdote: my brother has a single stripe of brown in one of his otherwise blue eyes. It’s kind of cool-looking, and also completely without precedent in our family.)
Identical twins are not, in fact, identical. They have extremely similar phenotypes, but they have different fingerprints, freckle patterns, and so on. You can’t step in the same river twice; the same thing is true of our magically-mitochondria-less clones, even accounting for a lab environment. You can see this at work in a cloned cat named CC: she has a different fur pattern than her gene and egg donor, because of whatever slight environmental variations or mutations were present during gestation.
Frankly I don’t care whether you think Rex dyes his hair or not. I think he doesn’t, just because it’s so short that unless he bleached it every day his roots would be showing, and every time I see his character model I have to remind myself he’s not bald (and where tf is anyone getting hair dye in a war zone), but you can think he does or he doesn’t or he’s secretly a shapeshifter or whatever the hell you want, no skin off my nose.
But for heaven’s sake, it’s not racist to understand science. I literally learned all of this in half an hour by Googling “are clones identical” and clicking the first reputable-looking link. By all means, there’s a fuck of a lot of racism in fandom and in Star Wars fandom in particular, and it should absolutely be called out and remedied. Phenotypical variation among literally millions of clones isn’t it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK223960/ - basic explanation of cloning from the National Institute of Health
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genotype%E2%80%93phenotype_distinction - Wikipedia article on the difference between genotype and phenotype - not a source in itself but a good plain-language explanation
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-cloning/myths-about-cloning#Myth4 - direct link to “no, clones are not identical” from the FDA
https://www.britannica.com/list/cc-the-first-cloned-cat - pictures of CC and CC Prime, also brief explanation. would’ve embedded pics but i hate mobile and i have a headache now so find em yourself
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