I believe he/she also said the movie opened with the Luke and Leia flashback at some point, which would then transition to Leia watching Rey train.

Ugh, I can’t believe they changed it… But thank the Force that they left in a few mentions of the Force dyad still.

Regarding Palpatine’s survival, this is kind of how I picture his it: The blue energy at the end of ROTJ was Palpy’s spirit, and a fragment of his spirit latched onto Vader’s helmet (I think Charles Soule’s comic was meant to hint at this). At some point Sith cultists collected the helmet and the Emperor’s broken body from the wreckage of the Death Star and his spirit then repossessed his own rotting corpse, like a lich. This is why Palpatine was able to speak to Kylo through the helmet and through his own puppet, Snoke.

I like to think Snoke may have been clone bodies leftover by his master, Plagueis, that Sidious then used for his own purposes. He could’ve just been a homunculus, though. Not even sure how that could be tied in. But it would be a fun way to confirm those theories true, from a certain point of view!

Maybe the Sith Uber-spirit was trying to figure out a way to possess a clone of himself (and cut out the need for an apprentice), but maybe a clone was never enough to maintain the Sith spirit, which is why Palpatine had to repossess his own body, and Plagueis’ leftover experiments were then just reused as a puppet by Sidious.