I was thinking about this earlier. Shouldn’t the cloned palpatine faces in the liquid vats shown early in the film be younger versions of him and not disfigured?
Because Rey’s father was a clone of palpatine and was obviously show to be young. Unless I’m not remembering something correctly.
His ugly face is his real form. It’s why he doesn’t turn young when he sucks up Rey and Ben’s life force, and why he turns into that abomination in RotS.
Have we ever gotten a concrete answer on this in canon? I feel like it’s always been up to interpretation whether the deformity was from having his lightning reflected back, or if he was physically transforming now that he was finally shedding his innocent chancellor disguise. Same way I think it’s up to interpretation whether Windu actually defeated Palpatine in a duel or if Palpatine threw it for the sake of manipulating Anakin