Speculation Empire still strong after ROTJ

You mean like an Admiral Thrawn or Admiral Daala types commanding a decent force loyal to the empire, not around when this all goes down.
But then they come back and rally the remnants of the Empire
Possible for sure, however I highly doubt there would be a galaxy wide war for thirty years on the level of the clone wars we saw in the PT.
No, somebody will have the upper hand in the ST, and I highly doubt it will be the remnants of the empire.
I think Zahn's first trilogy was a good variable way to look at what would happen to the empire, after the rebels won.
Lucas after all had to agree to this.

 

I think this is far more likely as well as interesting. Imperial remnants who sort of break off into different factuions led by different crazy leaders who sort of form a hybrid army in their own image so to speak. They usurp Imperial technology and creat a newer amalgam of underwold & Imperial forces, perhaps an amalgam of Imperial and loyalist armies. very interesting idea.

 

Mind = blown!

 

No Thrawn please

 

No someone like Ysane Isard. Director of Intelligence. Intelligent enough and dedicated to holding her position etc.

 

A couple of ideas:
-) In X-Wing a fraction of the Empire (General Weir and his commandos) declared they would start a "counter-rebellion". Wouldn't this be interesting?
-) Maybe some Imperial scientist was creating a weapon (a weapon to neutralize the Force?), but the Empire became smaller and smaller and ultimately, the scientist decided to sell the weapon he created on the black market (to the Hutts?).
After the Cold War a lot of weapons ended up being sold on the black market.

 

Some interesting points have been made. I think from a storytelling perspective, it makes sense for the Empire to be in remission or vanquished entirely by the start of Ep VII, but it's just one option, and dependant on the time which the ST is set.

From an "in-world" perspective, however, I think that Empire has a good chance of being extant and in power for a long time after ROTJ (short of some significant Rebel victory that blows the imperial infrastructure to bits).

My feeling is that, for much of their thousand years of hiding, the Sith fomented the fall of an already failing Republic. The Clone Wars may have been a Sith machination, but they were playing to preexisting antipathy towards the Republic.

I found the quote I referred to in my OP about Sidious' "good" intentions:

One of the issues in all of this is, that bad guys think they're good, and Lord Sidious thinks he's bringing peace to the galaxy, because there's so much corruption and confusion and chaos going on, and that now he's going to be able to straighten everything out, which may be true, but the price the galaxy's going to have to pay for it is way too much. -- George Lucas, RotS commentary

"...corruption and confusion and chaos...". Granted, Sidious is himself directly responsible for much of the turmoil, but as Lucas stated, he's trying "to straighten everything out", suggesting an already troubled state of affairs in the Republic.

And who's to say that the Empire is really that bad? Ok, it certainly was for Alderaan, and the Rebels were twisted up about Palpatine's dictatorship for what are probably very good reasons, but have we really seen "the "people's" take on the Imperial reign? Surely, Alderaan's destruction was whitewashed as either a strike against the Rebels or pinned on the Rebels themselves, or else the galaxy would have revolted en masse after the first Death Star's destruction. There must be something keeping the Empire's populace content. After all, it's a big galaxy, as we've seen, and the forces of millions of planets could have overthrown the Empire within hours if they all joined the Rebellion. For some reason, most of the galaxy didn't.

Could it be that the Rebels are entirely ideologically driven? Could the masses of the galaxy still accept the fascist Empire as a better alternative to the inefficient and ineffective Republic? And what is the next Emperor like compared to Palpatine?

Wouldn't it be interesting if the principal struggle we saw in the ST is between an Alliance that becomes increasingly terroristic against an Empire that is no longer ruled by the Sith and therefore that much less tyrannical?

 

Wow. 5 planets or so make a galaxy? Really?

 

The outlying planets and the ones that love Democracy or the ones that suffered heavily under the Empire would like it but there should be several planets that prospered from the Empire. Not trying to go into the EU since some people don't like that but the ones that were devout followers or the ones that suffered badly in the Clone Wars would not be happy to see the Empire gone I don't think.

 

I don't mind them having to deal with some problems from the Empire and its Imperial forces but I don't want it to be the main plot of the movies

 

Well, for starters, Hitler's assassination would have likely been a game changer; even a new bad guy would likely do things somewhat differently. There were endless attempts to kill him, more than most realize. What would have happened would have depended on when and whom it was that assassinated him (Valkyrie comes to mind, interesting to speculate on what would have happened had that been successful; they had a plan to overcome the military leadership).

Yes, there are still Nazis in the world, but they are a fringe groups of losers and lunatics, they hold no power.

Yes, the Empire would still be in existence in the galaxy after ROTJ, but it is doubtful that it would have any larger power without the Big 2, and without the Death Star to rule by fear. Another Sith could have arisen and taken over, and pulled the Empire back together, but I hope not; that would be too much of the same old song and dance. New plots, themes, and villains, that is what the ST needs, not rehashing of rebels vs empire with different faces.

 

I really dig the idea of a future group utilizing Imperial tech. That's just raunchy cool!!!!