The thing is, it’s clear Rey is not a 1:1 clone of Palpatine, since, you know, she’s not a younger Ian McDiarmid. She would just have been a creation based off of Palpatine’s genes, at that point what’s the difference from being her decendant? Nothing says she’ll become just like him since she’s already not exactly like him.
Furthermore, and this is an issue that would plague any version of the film that implies a genetic relation to Palpatine: the villain of the movie isn’t Palpatine, it is the countless generations of Sith spirits that once resided within him and now inhabit his rotting clone. It makes no sense to imply Rey is destined to become evil just because she’s genetically related to Palpatine, when the reason he’s so evil are those countless spirits that took over him. This is also why I like the chosen one idea. I mean, it was prophesized the chosen one would “destroy the Sith”, and now we have a movie where the villain is the literal embodiment of the Sith, it just makes too much sense.
You’re being nitpicky on the first point. The fact of the matter is that the majority of her DNA would come from Palpatine (maybe 95%). A normal child would only share about 50 percent, a grandchild 25 percent, etc. Your second point doesn’t make sense. Palpatine wasn’t “all the Sith” until he was summoned with the rest of his pals from Force hell. Everything he did in the prequels and originals he did because that’s the kind of dude he was. Plus, canon has never made it clear who exactly is in control of his body in TROS. We know all the Sith are in there somewhere, but he really does seem to be speaking and using the same mannerisms as Palpatine did in life.
I’m pretty sure the idea behind the essence transfer is an explanation for the rule of two, basically once a Sith apprentice overthrows his master he becomes possesed by his spirit, and the spirits from every Sith master before him. This would mean that every generation each new Sith master would become a bigger amalgamation of “all the Sith”. This would’ve happened to Palpatine before we ever even see him in episode I, when he killed Darth Plagueis in his sleep and became the new master, and this amalgamation of evil spirits is what we saw as Palpatine in all the movies. Vader broke the cycle because he didn’t strike down Palpatine in anger, but rather through compassion for his son, thus destroying the Sith as it was foretold. But Palpatine’s spirit was so powerful after generations of essense transfer that he was able to endure and cheat death through the dark science experiments on Exegol.
I don’t think this does much to make Palpatine’s return more clear, now we’re adding a bunch of extra clones that look nothing like him, and that apparently have nothing to do with the installations on Exegol? And they weren’t grown on a vat like we see on Exegol or Kamino, but were somehow bred inside random women?? if anything it makes it more weird and confusing.
That’s the point - it’s supposed to be weird science, anyway. Confusing? No. It’s simply adding a timeline to the development of Palpatine’s return. At first, some Sith cults tried to develop Palpatine clones outside of Exegol using this method, but they couldn’t conjure his spirit into them. Meanwhile, whatever they did on Exegol succeeded. Once Palpatine was aware of what transpired, he wanted all these other experiments killed off.
It IS confusing to add more strange elements to Palpatine’s return, inseminating random women with Palpatine clones is just a crazy thing to introduce through a few bits of dialogue, specially since it apparently didn’t work and Palpatine just ended up coming back through the experiments on Exegol anyway. At least cloning through lab vats had some setup with Kamino and even more now through The Mandalorian, but breeding random women is just really out there.
Again this does nothing to avoid undoing the big reveal in TLJ, we’re just dealing with semantics at this point, “well Kylo only kinda assumed Rey was a nobody, he couldn’t have possibly known Rey was a genetic experiment done by Sith cultists plotting to bring back Palpatine’s spirit… but his parents were really nobodies!”, how is that any better than Kylo not knowing some random junk trader he saw was the son of Emperor Palpatine, who chose to become a random junk trader?
I was under the assumption that the visions Kylo and Rey received were supernatural through the Force in some way. Because clearly they are seeing into the future, as well. So the idea is that Kylo would have been able to sense through the Force, or the Force would have told him, if there were something special about Rey’s father. Regardless of whatever path he chose in life. And please don’t say “oh, but he would have sensed Rey’s nature then” because the purpose of his vision, and that whole movie, is Rey’s obsession with her parents, not her own nature.
Yeah, you can argue their visions aren’t 100% trustworthy, that’s what the people who wrote TROS would argue, but it doesn’t take away that this revelation is the big resolution to the story in TLJ. Rey’s obsession with finding her parents, Snoke and Kylo’s obsession with lineague and bloodlines, and ultimately the audience’s obsession with getting the “big reveal”, it all culminates with a revelation that totally shatters everyone’s conceptions and leaves them with a new perspective. To take that and go “well, actually, that wasn’t the whole picture, the reality is this totally different thing happened” is just an absolute slap in the face to the entire previous film.