What if Palpatine's name was never revealed following ROTJ

As far as I remember, Palpatine's name was never mentioned in ROTJ. He was always referred to as "the Emperor". So if we never found out the Emperor's name, would it have made a good plot twist when Palpatine finally reveals himself as Darth Sidious in ROTS?

 

Yes, in fact, if nothing had ever revealed he was Palpatine, and Lucas hadn't made it stunnigly obvious in 2 & 3,we were led to believe that Palpatine was a really, really good guy, etc., it would have been a huge shock. Sadly, I don't think that was ever an objective.

 

It's not as obvious as you may think actually. I had some friends in Highschool who hadn't seen the OT prior to TPM and they had no idea that Sidious and Palpatine where the same person. One of them even kicked me under the table for spoiling it.
Now it seemed obvious too me when watching it, but I had to remember that I have seen this guy in ROTJ quite a bit over the years, and walking into the theater I had already known his birth name was Palpatine for some time.
So either all my friends where just really imperceptive, or it might actually not be as obvious as it may seem to us.

 

I feel like that is one of the biggest mistakes of the prequels..I never knew the emperor's name was palpatine beforehand but within the first 10 minutes you see sidious and then when they get to coruscant and palpatine is there it was so freakin obvious. I wish that Maul had had a larger role, taking most of sidious' lines, at least in the beginning of the movie. Then it would have fleshed out Maul's character more and given palpatine/sidious more mystery. ah well, what can you do? Ep 3 kind of pretends that everyone hasnt figured it out yet, if only we could have had doubts....

just my 2cents..
stoss

 

Considering all the speculation on these about whether Palpatine really was Sidious, I would say that it would not be all that obvious to the uninitiated.

 

The Novelization of Star Wars in 77 talked about Senator Palpatine becoming Emperor, so it was knid of unavoidable.

 

Even if we did not know the name Palpatine, the fact that he was played by Ian McDiarmid, the same actor who played the OT Emperor would have been more than enough to blow the secret.

 

Hmmm...could they have used a different actor? It looked like the Emperor in ROTJ was wearing a mask of some sort, so it shouldn't matter too much to use someone else.

 

Ian McDiarmid is such a great actor that Lucas would have been crazy to even consider casting someone else as Palpatine.

 

I agree completely, Ian is a fantastic actor.

 

My friend thought Dooku became The Emperor.

 

hahaha thats halarious

 

Indeed. He's not too bright.

Seriously, I wish I was joking

 

My friends were shocked that Anakin became Vader.

I wish I was joking too.