PT Palpatine's second lightsaber

In ROTS, Palpatine is show to have two lightsabers, the first one that he uses against Mace Windu and subsequently loses, and the second one that he uses against Yoda in their duel.

They are indeed two separate lightsabers, as Palpatine is shown to use both in the Lawless, against Darth Maul and Savage Opress.

Based on what we see in the Yoda fight as well as in the Lawless, Palpatine has a lightsaber hidden in each of his sleeves. However, against Mace and the posse, he only uses one of his lightsabers.

Did Palpatine have his second lightsaber hidden up his other sleeve the entire time? If so, that gives his "defeat" at Mace's hands a lot more meaning.

The Lawless shows Palpatine having both lightsabers on him, so it's likely that he used one blade against Mace's posse and kept the other one hidden up his other sleeve as a backup., just in case Anakin was late or didn't intervene.

With the evidence from ROTS and now the Lawless, it seems more and more likely that Palpatine was feigning defeat against Mace. I believe that Mace legitimately disarmed Palpatine, but instead of whipping out his second lightsaber, Palpatine let Mace force him back, because he sensed Anakin approaching and wanted to turn him.

Thoughts on Palpatine having a backup weapon hidden the entire time and not being in much danger from Mace?

 

The novelization explains this. Palpatine had hidden his spare Lightsaber in the antechamber, along with his main Lightsaber. It's in the artwork that you see when Palpatine reveals himself to Anakin. After the duel with Mace, Palpatine retrieves his spare. But the real reason is much more complicated. See, in 2003, Lucas filmed a different version of ROTS. A good chunk was different from the final film. In this version, Anakin's appointment to the Council is accepted without reservation from the senior Jedi Masters. Later when Palpatine finally reveals himself to Anakin, Anakin chooses to stay in Palpatine's office as opposed to going back to the Temple. Obi-wan, meanwhile, sees Darth Sidious contacting Grievous and the Confederacy leaders and telling them that they're going to Mustafar. Obi-wan recognizes Sidious as Palpatine and contacts the Temple and Yoda on Kashyyyk, to let them know of this. Mace takes the Posse to confront Palpatine, while Obi-wan goes after Grievous. When the Jedi confront Palpatine, Mace orders Anakin to stand aside and he refuses. Palpatine then stands up and takes Anakin's Lightsaber and uses it to fight the Jedi Masters. When you watch this closely, in the final film, you can see Anakin's saber instead of Palpatine's in a few shots. Anakin's saber falls in a different direction and Anakin snatches it up to cut off Mace's arm, when he's about to kill Sidious.

Lucas changed things in 2004, after Spielberg and their friends suggested that he redo Anakin's reasons for turning and when he does turn. Palpatine's Lightsaber was added in, with a few inserts, since Anakin's not in Palpatine's office at the time the duel begins.

 

That's interesting, never heard that before.

I'm not sure why Palpatine would keep the backup lightsaber hidden when he retrieved the main one.

It makes a lot more sense to have kept both on him, just in case he needed a spare weapon during the fight.

And he's shown to keep a lightsaber up each sleeve in the Lawless. So it's likely that he still had a lightsaber at the ready, when Mace tried to kill him with the final blow.

 

What I can never find is a good picture of the second lightsaber. I recall pictures of the Master Replicas version, and it looked like his normal electrum version:

Only the electrum finish had been replaced entirely by some sort of dark material.

 

Since the second saber was an afterthought, so we shouldn't judge the Mace duel according to this. Though it's entirely plausible that he had a spare lightsaber hidden elsewhere; it didn't raise any questions when viewing the action film itself (though as a kid, one of my theories was that he actually found the discarded lightsaber).

 

If his lightsaber survived that fall, then does that mean Mace did too?

 

Haha, I'm going to have to refer you to the respective 11 page thread

 

It makes a lot of sense for Palpatine to have kept the second lightsaber on him during the fight. This is the culmination of his master plan, he's not going to risk it just to turn the Chosen One.

Having the other lightsaber hidden up his sleeve makes his "defeat" at Mace's hands more plausible.

Palpatine wouldn't have risked his life and the Grand Plan in a duel with the Jedi. He would have had backups and contingencies, just in case.

 

Reminds me of Joker in TDK - I wouldn't risk the Battle for Gotham's soul in a fistfight with you

 

Here's proof of that.


http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/c/cd/AlternatePalpyDuel-RotSDeletedScene.jpg

You can read the rest on Wookieepedia.

He wasn't intending to lose the fight like that. When Anakin shows up, he switches tactics. He's hoped that Anakin would either come with the Jedi back there, or come in time after they've left.

That was a different situation. He was dealing with two opponents at once that he was planning to eliminate. In ROTS, he's planning to use this to deal with the Jedi and to convince Anakin to side with him.

 

The resemblance was intended. Much like the Joker, Palpatine has schemes within schemes.

 

Do you have a link to the wiki page for that alternative scene? I cant find it.

 

Nolan stole from George! Lol

 

I meant like the article about the alternate/deleted scene itself.

 

If I had THAT, you'd be reading it...


But at least there's visual proof of the original version.

 

Lol

Yea I've seen that before. I was just wondering if there was more information out there.

 

First two drafts of the script?

Its been a really long time since I've looked for those, lemme see what I can dig up...

 

Thanks! Don't go through too much work. I'm just interested in the topic and might post about it on my page.

 

The first draft of the ROTS is difficult to find online. Only the shooting script that largely matches the finished film.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Showdown_on_Coruscant

There's the info on the whole battle and the behind the scenes on the original duel.

 

I went looking through my old conversations and found that I'm missing a bunch from pre-2005.

So, no help there.

Yeah, there's only 46,000,000 places to download a copy of the fourth draft.

 

Still, you can find both the shooting script for AOTC on the Jedi Bendu site and Blue Harvest has the final draft, based on the revisions for the 01 reshoots.

 

Chewbacca89 -I haven't been on BH in a while, so I went and looked around. http://www.blueharvest.net/scoops/
-Shooting scripts for 5/6 films, The Holiday Special and The Star Wars. (Missing ROTS)

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Jedi Bendu is T-bone's site, I know that address by heart: http://starwarz.com/starkiller/
-Ton of stuff to look through, especially the deleted scene section.

 

Thanks! Ill go explore.

 

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