Unfortunately I don’t even think it really gave Kylo that much more agency. Kylo reprimands an officer who is skeptical of Palpatine and the Final Order, and there is a scene where Kylo communicates with Palpatine over hologram like he is his lackey, just like Vader was.

One thing to add that I think could be a nice touch is when Kylo says to Palpatine he should just kill him now, Palpatine should tell him to do it. “Do it. I have died before.”

I think Palpatine’s goal should be to take either Kylo or Rey as a new vessel. I feel like he has been grooming Kylo since birth to be his new vessel, so it is weird that he seems to throw him away so quickly for Rey. So if Kylo kills him then and there, fine. He has a new body.

When Kylo doesn’t immediately kill him, I think Palpatine should tell Kylo to just bring her to him. He has probably sensed her growing power and draw to the dark side, and he already knows Kylo doesn’t want to kill her. So his hope might be that that she will “kill” him instead and be an equally worthy vessel.

But Kylo knows he is up to something, so his goal should be the opposite of what Palpatine wants. So it should be clear that his goal is to prevent Rey from reaching Exegol and confronting Palpatine. Maybe Kylo is still unsure about how he should deal with Palpatine, but he knows he can’t give Palpatine what he wants.

This kind of bleeds into my complaints with Rey and Kylo’s interactions. It feels like TROS takes their whole “Join me.” conversation from TLJ and stretches it out across the whole movie. Their conversations certainly weren’t as engaging as their TLJ interactions, and I wish there was a way to make them more interesting.