Star Wars (Photo by Sascha Steinbach/Getty Images)
Star Wars brought back the main evil, Palpatine, but just because he survived doesn’t mean Anakin’s sacrifice is cheapened. Here are three pieces of supporting evidence.
One of the most controversial bits of Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker is the return of Palpatine, who was supposedly killed by Anakin Skywalker, formerly Darth Vader, in Return of the Jedi. It’s been heavily debated and criticized for multiple reasons, but for what it’s worth, I don’t think that there was anything else that could have been done. It had to be Palpatine.
There were only a few options here.
Snoke could live through The Last Jedi and be the new head honcho of evil. But Snoke was kind of lame from the moment he came on the screen. There was no real power, he just had a temper and a title and he ruled the galaxy on that alone. When we did finally see his power, it was nothing new. We’d seen it all before. And we’d seen worse, too.
The other option was to create a new bad guy. A Moriarty type, for you Sherlock Holmes fans out there. Someone bigger than all the other baddies who has been pulling the strings. But that’s the diciest of all. How do you create a new villain, even someone that has a foundation in the Star Wars universe like Plagueis, in just one movie and successfully raise the stakes beyond what we felt in either of the previous two trilogies?
You don’t.
So we arrive back at Palpatine. The main bad guy. Cheater of death. Cackler of cackles. All around evil dude. Retroactively, then, we have to look at what his return does to the original storyline. naturally, the question is what this means to the end of Return of the Jedi, and if Anakin’s return to the good team is undone by Palpatine’s survival.
The short answer is ‘No. Absolutely not.’ But if you want more elaboration, go ahead and start the list. We start with No. 3.