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Had two thoughts regarding Palpatine.
There was this weird implication in the film that I feel like hasn’t gotten a lot of discussion. When Palpatine exposits his evil plan to Rey, for some reason, that his spirit will possess her body once she kills him, and when he declares, “I am all the Sith”, when I first saw the movie it gave me the impression that Palpatine was basically saying every Sith in the Rule of Two, since Bane, has possessed their apprentice and formed some kind of collective consciousness over the past millennia. But, like most things related to Palpatine, it is left rather vague.
A part of me thinks it would be interesting to lean into that angle more, in order to differentiate ST Palpatine even more from OT Palpatine. I kind of think that the vessel isn’t consciously aware that their master would possess them when they killed them. Their identity is retained, but the spirit is passively controlling them. But maybe after Palpatine’s “death” that consciousness has come to the surface.
A cool way to get this idea across would be to layer Palpatine’s dialogue with multiple voices, to imply that that there is something more sinister deep within the withering husk of Palpatine. I also think leaning in this direction makes the summary of Episode IX be more than just, “Somehow, Palpatine returned.”
The final antagonist isn’t simply just Palpatine again, but the Sith incarnate.
Another though regarding the climax, I have been trying brainstorm ways to make the final destruction of Palpatine/the Sith more interesting than just Rey deflecting lightning back at him. Since Palpatine’s face melting is so reminiscent to how the Nazi’s are killed by the Ark of the Covenant, I wonder if we could see that after Rey stands back up, we could have the Force ghosts standing behind Rey. And to make their involvement rather simple, after Rey declares that she is all the Jedi (or however you replace/remove it), the Force ghosts simply turn into blinding light, and that light contributes to the disintegration, and final destruction, of Palpatine/the Sith.