What's your take on Emperor Palpatine being brought back for The Rise of Skywalker? — Page 4

Palpatine’s line about all the Sith living in him made me think that all of the spirits of the Banite Sith, including Darth Bane himself, existed as a collective consciousness within Sidious.

While Legends was obviously rather contradictory at times, both the Bane trilogy and the Darth Plagueis novel seem to hint at it. Bane begins learning Essence Transfer in the last Bane book, and when his apprentice kills him, it is left ambiguous if Bane’s attempt to possess Darth Zannah failed, or the weird feeling Zannah had actually indicated he succeeded.

Palpatine also experiences a similar sensation when he kills Plagueis. Again, it is ambiguous as far as what that feeling is, but I think it is left to interpretation.

But if Palpatine was also Plagueis, his speech to Anakin about Plagueis the Wise would seem weirder in retrospect, since the hint of smugness when speaking of his master’s death would seem odd, considering his master actually lives on in him.

If I were to speculate, I would guess that the apprentice is unaware when they become a vessel for their master. At least initially. I don’t know. It’s rather confusing.

“The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.”

Hal 9000 said:

Broom Kid said:

Good news! It’s also an audio drama!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v5wwQAVR6k

FTFY

It will also be animated on youtube… eventually.

Hal 9000 said:

Too bad I don’t read comics, or I’d have to read Dark Empire just to get insight into TROS.

Don’t do it, it’s terrible.

Dark Empire is so much better than TROS. It is perfectly understandable why DE was always such a controversial story, but hey, at least it is aware that it is putting forward some preposterous ideas and it tries to make it work. And it does work for some audiences, doesn’t quite work for others. Not sure who TROS works for.

I love Dark Empire. Dark Empire is what ROTJ should’ve been.

But not Dark Empire II/Empire’s End. Screw those.

Personally I was intrigued to see the Emperor return after the first teaser. To see him achieve the power to cheat death. And the actual way he’s brought back is a really interesting concept.

I mean think about it, 30 years after his death and the fall of the Empire, a group of Sith cultists, hidden on an uncharted planet, finally manage to perform a twisted dark side ritual that allows him to come back and possess a decaying body.

He wakes up to find a raging war between two new factions. The First Order see him as a threat to their power, and the Resistance obviously can’t allow him to return…

To me the thing that totally ruined his return is that they decided to connect him to Snoke, Kylo and the First Order, the idea that he’s “been out there all this time, pulling the strings”. It hurts the ending of RotJ because it implies Palpatine immediately went into concocting a plan to override our heroes’ victory. He’s the one that turns Ben to the dark side, he’s the one that creates the First Order, and our heroes are completely oblivious to the fact Palpatine’s behind it all!

Most people point to the fact he wasn’t set up at all in the first two films, but the truth is he didn’t need to. If Snoke had a completely separate story to the cultists on Exegol, making him the main perpetrator of everything that transpired after the fall of the Empire. If Palpatine had been completely out of the picture for 30 years, his return wouldn’t actually need previous setup. It would have elevated the stakes as a third faction rises from the shadows. Instead as it stands now, it only undermines the previous two films, since Snoke stood as the big bad evil perpetrating everything. His eerie mystery in TFA, his power and manipulation in TLJ. The man who built the First Order, who turned Ben to the dark side, who orders the destruction of the New Republic, reduced to a mere puppet with no agency in the story at all.

And then there’s “Rey Palpatine”, which I don’t even need to get into, ugh.

The point is Palpatine should’ve been treated as a new threat, instead of bending (and breaking) the story to insert him into everything that transpired in the previous films.

It would’ve been interesting if the cultists had used Snoke’s body as the final piece needed to bring back Palpatine, it would’ve directly tied his return as a result from the events in the last movie. Pryde could’ve sent it, secretly conspiring for Palpatine to take over. Imagine Kylo finding the corpse of his former Master, tied to a machine and speaking in the voice of the Emperor. And then once he absorbs the power of the dyad he morphs into Ian McDiarmid, similar to his transformation in RotS.

After Shmi dies, Anakin is understandably upset and frustrated, and he tells Padme he will one day become so powerful, he will even be able to stop those he loves from dying. He then has visions of Padme dying. This is another event Palpatine uses to manipulate Anakin, but I don’t think his offer is entirely empty. There is a glint in Palpatine’s eye as he mentions how Plagueis could save others from dying, but not himself. I think Palpatine returning fits right in with his quote about the the Dark Side being a pathway to abilities some consider to be unnatural.

On a side note, when trying to speak with Vader, Kylo says he will finish what Anakin started. I don’t think he had this in mind, but in a way he was able to do what his grandfather couldn’t. He did save the one he loved from dying.

I find Palpatine returning to be my only problem with TROS, but it’s such a huge problem with the movie that it ruins the whole ST for me. If Palpatine didn’t return in TROS, I might have still considered the sequels canon.

TROS would have been a perfect movie for me if the Emperor stayed dead.

Operation: Cinder

The perfect plot decision to summarize a pointless trilogy

Reborn Palpatine is such the perfect demonstration of the sequel trilogy’s lack of justification for its very existence that it isn’t even funny.

It also disarms anyone claiming that the sequel trilogy is anything else other than a creatively bankrupt trilogy

The sequel trilogy pushed boundaries

screenshot of palpatine

The sequel trilogy isn’t lifeless fan service

screenshot of palpatine

The sequel trilogy took risks

screenshot of palpatine

The sequel trilogy respected the original trilogy

screenshot of palpatine

Literally destroys any defense of the sequel trilogy

darklordoftech said:

I guess they felt that you after defeating Hitler, David Duke is an anti-climactic big bad.

Anyway, I find it interesting that while Dark Empire says that Sidious learned how to Essence Transfer from the Tedryn Holocron sometime after ROTS and the Plagueis novel says the Banites lost the knowledge of Essence Transfer as a result of Darth Gravid and that Plagueis wasn’t interested in Essence Transfer, the Rise of Skywalker novelization makes it sound like Plagueis taught Essence Transfer to Sidious.

It’s very likely that canon plagueis and canon bane are the same character

Bane having succeeded in transferring his essence from one body to the next for a thousand years before meeting palpatine