I’m starting to think that without any other footage or delete scenes to work with, it makes sense to go ahead and tell us Kylo is searching for Palpatine. 😕
You could say in the crawl that he’s searching for a mysterious, yet familiar, Dark Side presence that has reemerged. Don’t say that it’s Palpatine in the crawl and let his first appearance be a surprise, even if he’s in the first Act.