Emperor Palpatine returned in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker so Kylo Ren didn’t have to be the film’s main villain. One of the more shocking moments in The Last Jedi is when Kylo Ren kills Snoke and appoints himself as the First Order’s new Supreme Leader. While the sequel trilogy played up Kylo’s internal struggle, that appeared to be when he reached the point of no return and fully committed himself to the dark side. Even Leia resigned herself to the idea her son was lost forever, and Kylo used his final moments with Luke to proclaim he was going to destroy Rey and the Resistance. On the surface, The Last Jedi appeared to be a springboard for Kylo becoming the trilogy’s big bad.
Of course, The Rise of Skywalker’s teaser trailer contained the surprising reveal that none other than Emperor Palpatine was back in the fold. The overarching villain of the Skywalker saga’s first six episodes, Palpatine seemingly died in Return of the Jedi, but was returning for the story’s final chapter. In a way, it made sense since Palpatine became the thread that tied all three trilogies of the saga together. Lucasfilm’s company line is that Palpatine’s comeback was mapped out since The Force Awakens, but it appears this development was necessitated by Snoke being sliced in half.
In an interview with Awards Daily, The Rise of Skywalker co-writer Chris Terrio explained how he and J.J. Abrams wanted to redeem Ben Solo in the film. However, with Snoke’s death, Kylo Ren had assumed the mantle of the galaxy’s biggest villain, which complicated his turning back to the light:
Abrams attempted retcon gymnastics in The Rise of Skywalker, revealing the Emperor was behind the creation of Snoke and the First Order all along. However, Palpatine’s involvement in the film suffers from a clear lack of setup in the previous two sequel trilogy installments. Neither The Force Awakens nor The Last Jedi vaguely hint at Palpatine’s role, making his reappearance in The Rise of Skywalker feel sudden and rushed. On-paper, the concept of Palpatine corrupting Ben Solo is an interesting one, but it’s a seed that should have been more explicitly planted at the very beginning, allowing that thread to develop more naturally over the course of three movies. Similar to Rey’s true parentage, Palpatine being responsible for Ben’s turn feels like a left-field twist added specifically for the third film, which ends up hurting The Rise of Skywalker’s climax.
J.J. and I felt we needed to find a way in which he could be redeemed, and that gets tricky at the end of Episode VIII because Snoke is gone. The biggest bad guy in the galaxy at that moment seemingly is Kylo Ren. There needed to be an antagonist that the good guys could be fighting, and that’s when we really tried to laser in on who had been the great source of evil behind all of this for so long. That’s when we really started aggressively pursuing this idea that there is old evil that didn’t die. The source of the evil in the galaxy is this dark spirit waiting for its revenge and biding its time. The entity known as Palpatine in this version – his body died in Return of the Jedi – is patient and has been waiting. He dug his fox hole and has been waiting for his chance to re-establish his total domination.”
At the same token, Star Wars creatives making things up as they go along isn’t anything new (that dates back to the original trilogy), and one can make the argument Abrams did the best he could to piece everything together. After all, there aren’t many bigger villains in the Star Wars galaxy than Palpatine, and the Emperor was so heavily involved in the other episodes, it was only logical he’d be lurking in the shadows in the sequels. Fortunately for Abrams and Terrio, George Lucas teased Palpatine knew how to cheat death in the prequels, which helped lay the groundwork for the Sith Lord’s return. It would have been fun to see Kylo Ren unhinged as the main threat to the Resistance, but Palpatine ties the bigger picture together.
More: Emperor Palpatine’s Entire Backstory, Timeline, and Manipulations Explained
Source: Awards Daily
