While Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker may have been light on explanations when it came to its storytelling, the recently published novelisation has been shining a light on some of the unanswered questions surrounding the final chapter of the Skywalker Saga – most specifically, the return of Emperor Palpatine following his apparent death in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi.
We’ve already learned that the physical body of Palpatine in Episode IX was a clone of the original Emperor (and so too was his “son”, a.k.a. Rey’s father), and now a new passage has explained just how the Sith Lord managed to escape death after being hurled down an enormous shaft on the Death Star II.
“Falling…Falling…Falling…down a massive shaft, the betrayal sharp and stinging, a figure high above, black clad and helmeted and shrinking fast. His very own apprentice had turned against him, the way he himself had turned against Plagueis… whose secret to immortality he had stolen.
“Plageuis had not acted fast enough in his own moment of death. But Sidious, sensing the flickering light in his apprentice, had been ready for years. So the falling, dying Emperor called on all the dark power of the Force to thrust his consciousness far, far away, to a secret place he had been preparing. His body was dead, an empty vessel, long before it found the bottom of the shaft, and his mind jolted to a new awareness in a new body — a painful one, a temporary one.
“Although the Emperor had planned on Vader’s inevitable betrayal, the moment arrived sooner than expected: The secret place had not completed its preparations. The transfer was imperfect, and the cloned body wasn’t enough. Perhaps Plagueis was having the last laugh after all. Maybe his secret remained secret. Because Palpatine was trapped in a broken, dying form.”
So, there’s the official in-canon explanation… although it does raise a whole host of questions of its own: Why did Palpatine allow the galaxy to believe him dead and his Empire to crumble? What was the point in masquerading as Supreme Leader Snoke? How can Anakin claim to have balanced the Force with his line to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker if The Emperor never really died? And why was none of this in the movie?
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker sees J.J. Abrams (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) directing a cast that includes Star Wars veterans Daisy Ridley (Rey), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico), Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca), Billie Lourd (Lieutenant Connix), Greg Grunberg (Snap Wexley), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine) and Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa) as well as new additions Naomi Ackie (Lady Macbeth), Richard E. Grant (Logan), Dominic Monaghan (Lost), and Keri Russell (The Americans).
