Has anybody thought of replacing Supreme Leader Snoke in TFA with Palpatine? The Snoke we meet in TFA doesn’t really align with the one in TLJ, but it matches Palpatine perfectly. The surprise of his reveal on Exegol could be preserved by obscure his face even more than it already is (which is a lot) and his different voice is accounted for with the “I have been every voice you have ever heard inside your head” line. The only issue is its placement, as at this point Palpatine has not yet been discovered. What reason would they have for talking to him?
The other big issue is that the reveal of Snoke, when we meet him in the Throne Room for the first time, is lessened if we don’t see him in those scenes. Especially as he’s talked up as a major threat throughout TFA and the first two acts of TLJ. I think moving the scene where Kylo meets Palpatine earlier helps merge the two characters earlier in the narrative, without getting rid of the sense of threat to the other characters.