It seemed pretty obvious to me, but a huge number of TFNers were absolutely convinced that Sidious would turn out not to be Palpy. This bold and provocative twist was supposed to be the capstone of "George's genius," and make all of us "bashers" realize what ignorant philistines we'd been not to have realized the unprecedented artistic merits of the PT and the underlying cinematic genius of its creator. This hypothesis was preached incessantly and regarded by its adherents as not merely speculative conjecture about an upcoming film, but as an inevitability as reliable as the sun's rising. It was as though they had received this information in a prophetic dream from the mouth of God Himself. They placed no less confidence in their assertions to this effect than our dear friend kenkraly places in his assertions that the blurays will have "fixed colars."

I kinda wish I'd stuck around to see how much humble pie was ingested after the release of the ROTS theatrical trailer, but by that time I'd been banned from TFN for being a "basher." It probably wasn't very entertaining though; more than likely they all just decided to forget the hypothesis had ever existed, and never spoke of the matter again. No doubt the fact that palpy did turn out to be Sidious is now regarded as the capstone of George's "creative genius," where before it was considered to be too obvious and anticlimactic a plot device for a screenwriter of such depth and sophistication.