I guess you could make the argument for Rey not showing up. Luke kinda messed up by convincing her to leave Ahch-To, come to think of it. Ben likely would have realized Rey wasn’t on Exegol, and the two of them would have just chilled elsewhere while the Resistance launched an attack on Exegol.
Fairly certain that Finn, Poe, and co. would have gotten rid of all the Star Destroyers in that battle. Their actions never relied on the Palpatine interactions, did they?
Oh boy, I’m never going to be able to forget this plot hole now.
There would never have been a battle since Rey is the one that showed them how to reach Exegol.
That would have left the Final Order fleet free reign to fully deploy and spread out across the galaxy destroying countless worlds and then holding a proverbial blaster to the head of the galaxy.
True, but in some ways that wasn’t needed since D0 was from Exegol and could in theory direct them. Not saying one way or the other, but in some ways, the plotting of the course seems a bit unnecessary where you see Rey making tight maneuvers plotting the course but we see some HUGE ships appearing later with Lando … heck, even the Star Destroyers would need to get out …
Anyway, to say it simply … the movie already gives us an “out” of not needing Rey’s “plot the course” when we have DO, who’s from Exegol, could give them direction … let alone the idea that a bunch of other ships, from big to small, wouldn’t have been able to do, or are too big, to do the maneuvers that were shown.
I see this from the other perspective - since we were considering removing Finn’s line about “Palpatine has always wanted Rey alive,” but we weren’t sure how to make the scene work without that line, I say we should just axe the whole scene. If we assume that they learn about Exegol and how to get there just by tracking Rey, we won’t need D-O for anything except toy sales.
Personally, I’m inclined to agree. The only part I would be sad about losing out on is the whole “Thank you, General” conversation between Finn and Poe. I love those lines.
Anyways, I believe Hal is only wanting to remove Finn’s dubbed in line, which works fine enough imo.
Without that line Finn just says that Ochi was supposed to take Rey back to Exegol if he finds her. At that point, it’s up to interpretation whether Palpy would then kill her or just lock her up for a couple decades.