The dead speak ! On the officialStar Warswebsite in fact ! In a new web log post on the site today , Lucasfilm Story Group member Emily Shkoukani excuse “ The Contingency”—the canon name for exactly howEmperor Palpatinedied , came back to life , andreturned to powerin Star Wars . A program that was , according to the site , in place long before Darth Vader threw him down a beam of light on the second Death Star .
If this all vocalise sort of familiar , that ’s both a good thing and a tough thing . It ’s bad because , well , this is all all-important information that has n’t really been collected in one spot ( until now ) that would ’ve made the Brobdingnagian motion of “ How did Palpatine total back ? ” atthe beginning of The Rise of Skywalkerunderstandable . However , if it is conversant , peradventure you understand about it on this very internet site , where James Whitbrook had antecedently dig up late into Palpatine ’s plan — something that was ride throughout multiple novel , TV shows , comics , video games , and more , culminating in his Episode IX return .
The whole storey is told in the excellent column Star Wars Inside Intel , whichyou can and should read at this link . There you get the beat by beat breakdown of Palpatine ’s “ contingence . ” But we ’ll give you the TL : DR summary . As we bang from the three movies where he uprise to power and the three where he tried to keep and extend that power , Palpatine was always been a complicated planner with a penchant for evilness . So that he had a plan for resurrection in the event of his demise is n’t really that much of a stretch . That plan involve his cognisance being transfered to a clone on Exegol , where he ’d long been doing cloning experiments when alive , and enlist a few key hoi polloi in the Empire to pass over out the old ways and bring in the new . Pieces like Operation : Cinder , which gets named - dropped all across forward-looking Star Wars canon .
It wasn’t Agatha, it was Sheev all along.Photo: Lucasfilm
Meanwhile , as plans were being executed to wipe out the old Empire , Palpatine himself — in a infirm clon body on Exegol — did a few things . First , he began to build a new army ( the Final Order ) and research for a worthy watercraft in which to be reborn . Eventually , he found one in his granddaughter , Rey . Her parent did their good to cover her but , finally , she find oneself herself draw back into the level . It began with her grandpa ’s clone ( Snoke)—which , through Luke , Kylo Ren , etc . , prepare the wheels in apparent motion for a confrontation with her grandfather . ( It ’s unclear if all of that was part of the plan or just the Force or something ; this story is n’t a Swiss watch . ) Rey could have joined up with the Sith Lord , becoming the “ Dark Rey ” we glimpse in the film and resulting in Palpatine ’s restoration , but alternatively she employ the Force and the Jedi to kill him once and for all . oddment of Contingency .
Or so we think . This is an interesting story to be certain but it all feel very , very much like putting a square peg in a round trap . Like Lucasfilm had half the pieces to a teaser and just glued them all together in a fashion that kind of make sense , but kind of doesn’t . Huge holes in the tale remain unansweredincluding a brand novel one : did Palpatine ’s Contingency have its own Contingency ? As it stands right now , the answer is probably no . But if another filmmaker comes up with an idea ? Anything is potential . land Palpatine back to life at all has taught us that .
Again , for more , lead over to theofficial Star Wars websiteandcheck our 2019 article too .
Correction , 2025-03-26 , 7:52pm ET : This post has been blue-pencil to mark that Darth Vader is who threw Palpatine down a shaft on the second Death Star , not Luke Skywalker — an mistake we rue but which also gives us maybe the most io9 correction of all time .
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