I just watched the Rey Nobody version.
I remember with TROS:A I had made peace with the existence of TROS. With the RN version… I actually really like this movie. It works now! I can’t believe it went from a 1/10 Star Wars movie in the theatrical cut, to a 6/10 movie in the TROS:A cut (already a miracle), to honestly I’d say an 9/10. It’s a testament to the hard work everyone put in.
There are still a few pacing issues with the first act which make it feel a little fanedit-y, except they’re all things from the theatrical cut! All of the changes are more seamless than the remnants of how things were originally. And the third act just works. Thematically and narratively, it all pulls together so nicely in a way it didn’t pre-RN. I even love Palpatine’s return.
The DSII duel goes from a meaningless clash of laser swords to the thematic crux of the whole movie. Dave Filoni famously observed that in TPM, it’s called the Duel of Fates because Qui-Gon and Maul are duelling for the fate of Anakin’s soul - and that’s why adding it works here. Because Rey’s conflict is now about her pull to the Dark Side, and Kylo’s is about the pull to the Light, the DSII duel is a duel over the fate of Rey’s soul. Except unlike Anakin, she’s duelling for her own soul. She wins the fight against Kylo, but in doing so, she loses the fight for her soul. And we think that’s it, but then, we realise it’s also a fight for Ben Solo’s soul - and that fight was won. It makes sense out of his redemption in a way that never felt earned before.
And then when Rey enters the chamber on Exogol to thousands of hooded Sith, their nature hidden and ambiguous, there’s this wonderful sense of ambiguity about what Palpatine truly is here. It feels more like he is a servant of them, than the other way around - he’s literally a puppet on an arm, cloned so that the nameless, faceless Sith have a conduit that will mean something to the tangible galaxy beyond. This makes sense out of the plan, because Palpatine was never a chessmaster moving pieces around in unbelievable ways, and explains why he wants Rey to kill him - the Sith want Rey to strike down her enemy and become a Sith! It also stops Palpatine’s “return” undercutting Anakin’s sacrifice at the end of ROTJ, because Palpatine didn’t really return, maybe, probably.
This also all means that the true villain of TROS is simply the abstract nature of the Sith itself, which is really fitting for the end of the Star Wars saga.
But we can have our cake and eat it too, because then this form of Palpatine starts getting restored by the Dyad! He begins acting more like the actual real Palpatine did, and wants to become the true Emperor again! It’s a great twist on a twist, and it all flows smoothly and makes sense.
If you’d told me in 2020 that I’d actually end up loving TROS, I would have laughed you out of town. But here we are in 2023 and you crazy bastards actually did it.