After Starlight it’s odd to hear Vader’s theme accompanying his helmet rather than Palpatine’s considering who’s actually speaking to Ren through it.
Good idea here.
I did have some issues. One that’s unfixable is the Resistance being back to their TFA strength so soon after TLJ and all the other resets to TFA even down to Rey’s clothes and hair, Abrams really went out of his way to muck up TLJ.
I believe they claimed that the reason they made Rey’s appearance so similar to TFA is for the sake of the reused footage of Leia. But I’m not sure why they couldn’t just use more CGI to make changes possible. As for the Resistance, we are planning on changing Zorri’s dialogue on Kijimi so that it’s clear the people there are rebelling against the First Order ever since Skywalker’s sacrifice. This would help explain why the Resistance is larger than at the end of TLJ.
Palps seeding some clones around the galaxy to use as backups. Rather than Rey being referred to ‘grandchild’ explicitly there must be some way of making it more obvious that one or both of her parents were Palpy clones and it’s unexpected they had a child.
We are currently discussing an idea like this on Nev’s TROS thread. The idea is to maintain Rey’s parents as nobodies because that was the crux of TLJ’s reveal. Rey was only claimed to be a nobody by association in that film. So Rey can be a clone of Palpatine, similar to how Omega is a female clone of Jango Fett, and this way the reveal isn’t retreading ESB and is more pivotal for Rey’s character since she was quite literally created to be a vessel for Palpatine and take the Sith throne. Rey’s parents are nobodies that adopted/rescued her from a Sith cult, similar to how she will be adopted by the Skywalkers at the end of the film. The reason Rey doesn’t see her parents in the mirror cave of TLJ is because she doesn’t have any, biologically speaking - the long line of identical Rey’s is a hint at her nature of being a clone. And the reason Palpatine always wanted her dead is because he was paranoid that one of his clones could take all of his followers or simply have enough power to kill him as Rey eventually does.
And finally have Palpy goading Rey into killing him to fulfil the rule of two as his successor rather than telling her he’s going to posses her. It’s simple for him to prey on her darkness considering what Ren has told him about her toeing the line but I find it fundamentally stupid to tell her he’s going to posses her. It possibly wouldn’t be too difficult to have him play the dying victim like he did with Windu now he’s supposedly found his worthy successor. Obviously his plan remains to possess his clone but he doesn’t tell Rey that.
The above change I mentioned should make it less stupid that he’s telling her his exact plan. Again, if Rey’s sole reason for existence is exactly what he’s describing, it may fill Rey with enough dread and hopelessness to consider actually doing it.