I was thinking about how Krausfadr said that hopefully people would continue looking at ways to move Palpatine’s reveal to later in the movie, and I just thought of something: What if it were moved to the midpoint, right after Rey escapes the Star Destroyer? It would go something like:
- Kylo feels he’s failed at getting Rey to team up with him against Palpatine
- Kylo goes to Exegol to try and kill Palpatine by himself
- Palpatine reveals he’s dying (someone already altered that scene to have him say “I don’t have long”) and offers to make Kylo the new Emperor
- Kylo is told to kill Rey
- The next time we see him he’s on Endor, seemingly ready to do just that (we’d need to remove some dialogue, but that shouldn’t be hard because a lot of what he says in that scene is spoken off-screen anyway).
Why wouldn’t Palpatine want to do the spirit ritual with Ben if he’s dying?
Presumably because he isn’t sure Ben is strong enough to be the new host, so he wants him to kill Rey to make sure. I kind of assumed that’s what was happening from the beginning (Darth Sidious is no stranger to the “pit your potential successors against each other and whoever survives is more worthy” plot).