Emperor Palpatine returned in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but we don’t know how. Here are three questions about the return of the Phantom Menace.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker brought back the evil architect behind the Galactic Empire and the fall of the Jedi Order, revealing him to be the puppet master behind the First Order as well. Thought to be long dead, his return proved to be surprising and, unfortunately, barely explained.
As we have covered in part here, there are many layers to his return. How is he still alive, what has he been doing, and why is he revealing himself now? The big reveal of the movie was probably Rey’s parentage, but next is the shocker that Darth Sidious himself is still kicking.
The explanation we get is a repeat of Palpatine’s line from Revenge of the Sith, when he tells a conflicted Anakin Skywalker that “the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.” He tells Kylo Ren this as the grandson of Skywalker strides into Palpatine’s lair.
For the Resistance, Beaumont Kin (played by Dominic Monaghan) provides all of the remaining explanation. When discussing whether Palpatine could have returned, he explains it as “Dark science…cloning…secrets only the Sith knew.”
The good guys in The Rise of Skywalker may have been content with this explanation, but we are not. How did Emperor Palpatine return, why did he look like a zombie, and should the galaxy fear his return once again?
3. How did Emperor Palpatine survive and return?
Bringing Emperor Palpatine back as the ultimate villain is not a vice restricted only to Disney and J.J. Abrams. In the Expanded Universe now referred to as “Legends” — that is, the books and comics that were written before Disney acquired the franchise — Palpatine returned as well.
In the comic miniseries Dark Empire, Emperor Palpatine was seeking to take over the galaxy again. He had a near-endless supply of clone bodies, and would transfer his mind and consciousness to each one.
The other option would be that his body was recovered from the Death Star, either before it was destroyed or after. If the former was to be true, someone would have had to rescue him from the depths of the battle station in mere minutes (or perhaps he rescued himself?). In the latter, his broken body would have been somehow restored while his consciousness waited to reinhabit it.
None of these options is perfect, and none can be chosen definitively. The clone theory is the option with the least holes, yet we are given no indication this would be possible. The presentation of Palpatine seems to suggest this was his original body, although if that were the case the through-line from “falling down gigantic shaft in a moon-sized battle station” to “safely off the station” seems impossible to track.
This question is begging for resolution via the Expanded Universe. A comic series could show how Palpatine has been manipulating the galaxy from behind the scenes ever since his “death” at the Battle of Endor. Perhaps a novel somehow tells this story alongside another. Either way the manner in which Palpatine survived has serious ramifications for life and death in the galaxy, and whether they can feel safe now that he died in The Rise of Skywalker (again?).
2. Why was Palpatine’s body so beat-up?
In The Rise of Skywalker, we see Emperor Palpatine in a body barely there and barely alive. His fingers are broken stumps, his eyes milky, hanging from a life support array like some sort of zombie marionette. Why was his physical body in such poor shape?
The answer to this question will help us to answer many more as well. Is this Palpatine’s original body, technologically kept alive for decades after it was torn apart over Endor? If it is, then we have to question why he hasn’t used technology to help him recover more fully.
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Another Sith to fall down a long shaft, Darth Maul, gained a mechanical lower half. Darth Vader, the very person to throw Palpatine down that shaft in the second Death Star, was savagely burned on Mustafar. All four of his limbs were mechanical and he was kept alive by an intricate breathing system that gave him his distinctive voice.
Palpatine knew intimately how technology helped Vader; why did he not make use of it to repair or replace his broken body? Why not any skin grafts, or robotic digits? Was hanging from a small crane the best option? Has he never heard of bacta?
The other arm of possibilities seems to fit better, even if the movie itself gives no exposition towards this end. What if this was a clone body? In the Dark Empire comic series now in Legends, Palpatine is perpetually in a decrepit host body because the Dark Side wounds and distorts his host body.
Could this be the fate for Palpatine? Clone bodies breaking down? It would explain why Palpatine was in such bad shape; every subsequent body broke down on him, and so he needed to find another option. It would even provide a potential answer to the question of why Palpatine was still disfigured when he absorbed the life force from Rey and Ben; Palpatine’s very anatomy could have been altered by the Force lightning reflected back on him, affecting even his cloned versions.
That theory is a bit out there, but this is an entire area we don’t understand. The filmmakers seem to have tossed a few different elements into the mix without parsing out the details, but if there is a cohesive idea behind them we can try to figure it out.
1. Can Palpatine return again, or is he truly dead?
At the end of Return of the Jedi, our heroes celebrated the death of Emperor Palpatine and the beginning-of-the-end for the Galactic Empire. At the end of The Rise of Skywalker our heroes celebrated the death of Palpatine and the end-before-the-beginning of the Final Order. What’s to say this won’t be repeated again?
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This is another question difficult to answer without the knowledge of how exactly Palpatine returned the first time. If he is using clones, then it certainly seems like he could come back again using the same process — that is, unless whatever technology or bodies necessary were captured or destroyed by the Resistance when they won the battle of Exegol.
If Palpatine has sustained the same body for all of these years, then he is almost surely gone for good. When Rey rebounded his Force Lightning attack back on him, his body was not simply damaged or disfigured. He blew apart in pieces, his body completely disintegrated.
We don’t have the answer to whether the Sith have the ability to return as a “Force ghost” as Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi have. We have seen no evidence of such in the movies, and while Legends content did show Sith ghosts, the current canon has been careful not to touch this area directly. Barring something unexpected, then, Palpatine cannot return in any form.
That’s a relief both to the forces of good in the galaxy, and to fans ready for something new. There is a certain balance to Palpatine being the puppeteer behind it all for the sequel trilogy as he was for the first two; in a sense this could be just as rightly called the “Palpatine Saga” as Skywalker. Yet it’s also a let down, as not even Snoke or Kylo Ren can be judged entirely on their own merits as villains.
Emperor Sheev Palpatine is a dark and menacing figure, one who slipped from memory and nightmare to once again threaten the galaxy in The Rise of Skywalker. The film did not explain his return to us in the film, but we can draw up theories that help us to understand. Thankfully, his reign of terror appears to be finally over.