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
I’ve always interpreted it that he wanted the Jedi to come and duel him, so he could make his play against the Jedi and manipulate Anakin further in one fell stroke, but not that he deliberately was throwing the duel. He kills the other three Jedi so easily, and only has trouble with Mace; he also had no way of knowing Anakin would show up at his office during the arrest, so when that happened, it was like a freebie for him.
As for the wrinkled face, he’s just a regular human of about forty when we first meet him in TPM; I don’t think there’s any indication he’s meant to be secretly monstrous looking, and the lightning just drains and whithers him. He’s normal looking as a teenager in the Darth Plagueis novel, though that was published later so it’s not exactly evidence of anything in ROTS.
Edit: Just read Jar Jar’s comment. Huh! The more you know.