ST What's your opinion on Sheev Palpatine coming back as the main villain of the Sequel Trilogy?

It's kind of funny that Snoke was just a force puppet of Pallpatine,. and that his voice in side Kylo's head, along with Vaders etc, was just Palpatine lip syncing.

Because that was one of my early 'dumb' Luke theories. That he was actually Snoke, and that he realized that Ben needed a Snoke figure to guide him, and became that figure for him, because he knew Ben wouldn't follow Luke for very long. And Snoke wasn't even there, he just made Kylo and Hux, and the very few who actually saw him, force-think they were seeing a figure in front of them, when it was nothing.

And so Luke just stayed on the island, making this all happen. And he hadn't even been himself in 6 years.

 

He wanted to die on the Island of Silly Things!

 

I get the sense from the movie that Palpatine could only transfer his spirit into Rey because they were connected by blood. The movie implies that Rey’s bloodline means she already has some of Palpatine in her and the ritual at the end is just the final step in an ongoing process. “You don’t just have power. You have his power.”

So it’s not the same situation as in the EU, where Palpatine could possess other people if he needed to. Kylo was never a host option for him, he was just a tool. A tool who was also a powerful ally, of course. Palpatine’s ideal end scenario was to rule as Empress within Rey and with the new Vader by his side, effectively resurrecting the Sith Order of his Empire years. Only they’d be even more powerful this time.

I still wonder if having Palpatine know of the dyad earlier in the movie makes more sense. Terrio’s comment in the documentary was: “The hope at the beginning of the film that Sidious articulates is that the dyad will come together on the dark side. But the reversal is that the dyad does come together, and it is as powerful as we expected, but they come together on the side of the light.”

The dyad is more central to the story than spiritual possession or the mystery of Sith spirits. It relates to two main characters and was present through most of the drafts. And it connects to how the movie interprets Palpatine’s bigger mission all the way back in Revenge of the Sith, when he tells Vader, "To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret."

Palpatine was already halfway there, having survived the events of Return of the Jedi. But he still had a ways to go, and the movie shows that the dyad is this long-sought-after power: "The life force of your bond... A dyad in the Force. A power like life itself... unseen for generations."

So having Palpatine always want the power of the dyad seems to make his plan in Rise and the overall story more straightforward. He wants to regenerate. And he wants to harness that power so that he can’t be defeated again. There’s no need to bring possession or Sith spirits into the mix in this scenario. It’s just the dyad and what it represents for the future of the galaxy.

 

The irony is that they felt the dyad plot was too confusing. They apparently debated this until last minute, and were even going to strike it from the film entirely at one point.

 

I’m not sure that Abrams was totally against the bond. The idea from the start was that Rey would be the one to help turn Kylo Ren away from the dark. But Kylo was also doing terrible things from the start, so TLJ’s Force bond was a way to get those two characters to interact without it being an immediate confrontation.

We also know that Leia would’ve played a big role in his redemption, and maybe, had Carrie Fisher not died, there could’ve been an alternate path that allowed Rey to do this without it seeming shoehorned to some fans.

Can you think of a redemption story for Kylo featuring Leia? Or is any redemption of Kylo something untenable? Because I do think his redemption was always going to happen.

 

It's hard to say what JJ's original intent was because it's all over the map. The very first interview I heard from him regarding Kylo and the trilogy (and this also came from KK) was that this was supposed to be the opposite of Vader. We would see a hero's journey but for a villain.

That doesn't sound like a redemption story, nor does it sound like 'there's a dyad bond between Rey and Kylo.

It sounds like at the start of things, and this may have been lost even during filming of the first movie, that they wanted Ben to the big bad at the end. But at some point changed things, realized that was not workable, or simply chickened out.

 

While the Dyad was a development of the Force bond in TLJ, it's also an expansion of an idea that's present throughout the sequels and that comes from the prequels: the balance between the light side and the dark side of the Force.

The sequels set up Rey and Kylo Ren as representing opposites from the very beginning. Mythically, male/female and dark/light are the starkest contrasts, and the ones that come up again and again in behind-the-scenes discussions. They embody the ancient schism between the Jedi and the Sith.

The sequels posit the idea that the Force is once more out of balance after Return of the Jedi. The bond that is born between Rey and Kylo Ren, and which evolves into the Dyad, represents the ultimate goal of these last three movies, it represents the restoration of that balance.

And this is something that even precedes Abrams's involvement in Episode IX, because it's also present in Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates. In that early script, the heroes and villains are racing toward the mythical Force planet of Mortis to obtain a power greater than anything the Jedi or Sith had known before. Here's how Rey describes the planet in the script:

"It's an ancient place. From a time before the Jedi, before the Sith. Two thrones, two powerful beings. One of darkness, the other of light. Together, they brought balance."

Later on, the ancient Sith Master Tor Valum describes the planet thus:

"The well of the Living Force. The source of the galaxy's birth."

Finally, when Rey confronts Kylo Ren in Mortis, and he asks her to join him once more, he says this:

"I don't have to be alone. With the power of this place, we could rule the galaxy as the Ancients did. The Dark Side and the Light."

That notion of balance is present in multiple ways in TFA, TLJ, and in the final version of TROS. The difference is that in TROS the notion of the balance is presented in the form of the Dyad and not explained too well. It's not as connected to what came before, but the notion is pretty much the same, as Palpatine's description can be read as an alternate version of Tor Valum's:

"The life force of your bond: A Dyad in the Force. A power like life itself, unseen for generations."

I think the Dyad is ultimately these filmmakers' answer to what the balance of the Force looks like. The quotations from Trevorrow's script connect it more explicitly to the mythology established in the prequels, which makes me suspect it may be an element that originally came from Lucas's sequel treatments, which dealt more explicitly with the connection between the Living Force and the Cosmic Force. But it also ties to the long history of mythological pairs of opposites, and it connects not so much to the notion of a romantic fusion of souls as it does to the idea of there being great power inherent in the union of opposites, in the dissolution of a binary that divides the universe from itself.

There's also a neat connection to the title of the movie and the long history of the word "Skywalker." In the original scripts for the first Star Wars movie, the Skywalker was the holy man who discovered the Force and taught this knowledge to his children. He was the patriarch of the Jedi, a concept that was later adapted in TLJ's Jedi artwork showing the single origin of the light and dark sides. And when the sequel was being developed, discussions were had about the notion of the Skywalker being a mythical role that a Jedi can come to fill, rather than something specifically related to blood. So the restoration of the balance, the creation of the Dyad, is specifically what is alluded to when the last movie talks about the Rise of Skywalker.

Unfortunately, TROS didn't do a great job of tying up all these concepts explicitly, of synthesizing the Dyad, but it did at least introduce the idea and discussed it to some degree. The germ of the idea was present from the beginning of the sequels, but the synthesis that was needed was imperfectly executed, to say the least.

 

Im wondering if Rey’s bloodline would have let Palpatine takeover Rey. So Rey’s mind would’ve bumped out of the drivers seat and Palpatine would be in control. That would mean some of
what Palpatine said was a lie.

 

@godisawesome

I know you’ve explained it before, but I can’t remember how or why TLJ ruins Rey and Kylo’s relationship dramatically. Is it because Rey’s motivation for wanting to understand/redeem Kylo comes across as artificial and not intuitive, chipping away at her logic as a character within the story? It’s been a while since I rewatched the movies, but I will confess that although that argument has made sense to me before, it wasn’t something that felt natural for me to interpret. But perhaps that has to do with unconscious bias on my part, or maybe I need to learn more about what makes something dramatically compelling versus not so.

Also, I disagree that Johnson would not have looked at their roles symbolically. Independently of whether he was thinking forward to the next movie, the symbolism behind their opposition felt like an essential part of his mostly self-contained film. Specifically the movie has some strong archetypal imagery, primarily in a visual sense but also in terms of how it pairs and mirrors different roles. Indeed a common theme repeated in more than just Rey and Kylo is the idea of finding a balance between opposing viewpoints.

 

This isn't what balance means, as the PT (and even OT) establish. Lucas is very clear about this. He's done enough interviews about it. Balance doesn't mean equal sides. It means harmony. The force is imbalanced because of the existence of the Sith. The force is not out of balance because there are more force users on one side than the other. The Jedi are in balance - in harmony - with the Force. Removing the Sith, removes the imbalance.

Balance in this context is more like ... cancer. If you had an equal number of healthy cells, and cancer cells, you wouldn't say your body is in balance. If that was the case, you'd be very very sick. The Force is not balanced because Rey and Kylo are together.

Second, TFA doesn't really establish anything about Rey and Kylo being equal opposites, or even a Dyad. Rey is immediately powerful in the force with no training whatsoever - or as I remember a lot of discussion around the time of TFA - that Rey either downloaded her powers from Kylo, or he accidentally re-awakened her powers when he tried to read her mind . Whatever that means. She doesn't have any temptation to the dark side whatsoever. She's as purely good as it comes in SW. Kylo, on the other hand, has been training his entire life, and he still sucks. He's still can't control himself. He's been training as a dark sider for 6 years, and still hasn't finished his training. The dark side is supposed to be the quick and easy path, while the light is the long path, but the ST switches it up, and Kylo sucks at it. The 'bond' that is established in TFA is no more special any of the force bonds we've seen in the trilogy. And remember Kylo's TFA story is that he's being tempted by the light, and is trying to remove those temptations one by one because he wants to be more powerful than Vader. (Who gave into this familiar light side temptations and went to the light again). Kylo's TFA story had nothing to do with being in balance or equals with Rey. If that was the case, where is Rey's dark side temptation story? It's not there because it was never conceived of at this point.

And finally:

Sauron_18 said: ↑
I get the sense from the movie that Palpatine could only transfer his spirit into Rey because they were connected by blood. The movie implies that Rey’s bloodline means she already has some of Palpatine in her and the ritual at the end is just the final step in an ongoing process. “You don’t just have power. You have his power.”​

There's no Palpatine in Rey. The ST has this weird thing with blood being literally evil. Kylo has too much Vader blood in him as well. But that's not how the force works. In the OT, Luke isn't in danger of becoming his father because he has too much Vader blood in him or something. It's because he has the same personality, and some of the same faults. His inherited force power is just force power. It's the personality that makes it potentially dangerous. He's following in his father's footsteps, almost unknowingly, and in some cases making the same choices and mistakes. That's why that works. It's not because Luke has too much evil blood in him. Additionally, Kylo doesn't have too much Vader in him. Besides being a dark sider, he's nothing like Vader at all. Kylo is trying to be the opposite if Vader. The fact that the ST posits this is one of the more ridiculous misunderstandings of the franchise and only serves to make JJ look like he wasn't quite paying attention to the OT because pew pews pews were going off at the time.

You say Rey already has some of Palpatine in her. What parts? What personality traits does share with Gramps? In what way is she becoming him, or in danger of becoming him? Even if she literally has his literal blood in her, why would blood make her evil? Her parents weren't. So why would she have his power?

There are none. And that's because Rey wasn't conceived conceptually as a Palpatine. Once again, this was a very very late addition to TROS production. Probably even after Palpatine was brought back into the story. Nothing about the trilogy wasn't written with Rey is Palpatine in mind.

Rey doesn't have HIS power. She has the force. Palpatine doesn't own the dark side. (Just like Luke says the Jedi don't own the light) And the dark side is not inside his blood lurking about. He doesn't have special dark sider TRADEMARKED powers that only Palpatine has. Do you see how ridiculous this gets when you actually explore this line of thinking? The whole thing is beyond stupid. It's pure nonsense. And it doesn't align with anything in the rest of the franchise or even the the ST itself.

 

One of the best aspects of the return of Palpatine and the Rey Palpatine concept is actually the amount of interesting stories ahead that can be fleshed out in novels or in upcoming TV shows. There’s loads of cool setups that can be tackled now for the 2 decades between ROTJ and TFA.

Mando seems to be building up to clone tech and ST ties as early as next season and the same may be true of Bad Batch based on the S1finale.

The fact that Palpatine had a son made similar to how Jango made Boba that ended up being unable to use the force but sired one of the most naturally gifted force users in a generation has a lot of story potential. The Shadow of the Sith novel I’m reading is getting into some of the potential of this already and it’s fascinating.

The Palpatine return also works very nicely for why they First Order was so similar to the Empire and also sets up some great moments for Palpatine himself seeking to influence Ben Solo.

Last but not least it won’t shock me if Snoke himself becomes the big bad of Mando as early as S4 with perhaps hints of his creation as early as the end of next season.

Snoke has a lot of story potential for much the same reasons that Maul, Grevious and Dooku all did. Any apprentice of Palpatine’s is immediately interesting. One he made himself? Even better. Especially if Grogu’s blood is part of what leads to his creation and his failure with his attempt at a son is what leads him to change things up and create the monstrosity that becomes Snoke

 

@DarkGingerJedi

Regarding the balance, I didn’t say the sequels viewed it as equal numbers on both sides. Harmony is precisely what I meant. Kylo represents the dark side that has grown too strong once more. Rey represents the reawakening of a weakened light side, growing stronger as the movies progress. Their conflict (TFA), bond (TLJ), and eventual communion (TROS) are a rebalancing act, whereby the darkness loses its excess power and returns to its more natural levels.

The great imbalance of the Sith has already been corrected in Return of the Jedi. But besides the Sith influence, Lucas also posited that there was some degree of darkness needed in the natural course of things. It grows too strong when the Sith are in power, but some of it will always be there. The dark side had once again started growing too strong right before the sequels, creating a new imbalance represented by Kylo’s increase in power. He’s not incompetent, he’s just not at the level of Vader or the Sith when the sequel trilogy starts, but he’s getting there.

So the idea the sequels present is that as Kylo as the dark side grows in strength, so too does Rey as the light side. To combat him, yes, but more importantly to reconcile. I’m not saying it’s philosophically sound, nor even that it’s what Lucas would’ve done. But that’s what I get from the sequels. That to find balance again the light and dark need to find a stable state, represented by a reconciliation between Kylo and Rey.

Regarding the questions of bloodline, I don’t disagree with your view. But I think the sequels initially put forward the more mythical view of blood or ancestry defining destiny. It’s the notion of ancestors living on in some spiritual sense in their descendants. The movies bring this up, it’s something the characters struggle with. It’s not representative of our real world at all, but it is part of the mythical milieu. And it’s debunked even there. The movies resolve that conflict by saying that although the past cannot be ignored, it does not need to define the future.

I made that comment because I do think it’s the logic under which the movies and the characters operate. TROS leans into it too much, which is why it feels so convoluted. But when you look more carefully, that’s the kind of logic that it seems to be built on, flawed as it is. The writers overestimated how much credence anyone would give to such old-fashioned ideas of bloodline. Most people, fans included, don’t go into Star Wars with the mentality that they’re going to see a Medieval drama, though that’s certainly in its DNA. I think all those questions of bloodline are a case of the filmmakers immersing themselves too much in the influences of Star Wars and not coming back out for air to see whether it made sense in the actual SW universe. Or maybe they just did it to justify a plot they wanted to drive forward. Either way, it’s definitely an excess on their part, and Lucas would never have gone there.

And really, most of the sequels don’t at all follow the philosophy or spirit of Star Wars that Lucas laid out. New creators bring their own view of things, their own interpretations. While I think Lucas is much wiser than them, I do believe that making that distinction is important if we are to make sense of what the new filmmakers made. So when I bring up these ideas of how they interpreted the balance, I’m not saying it’s what Lucas would’ve done. Even if they don’t really go against what he laid out, as I hope I clarified in this post, they’re still a path he probably would not have taken.

(I also don’t mean to suggest any of this structure was planned too any meaningful degree. Most of it is an attempt by later movies to make sense of the ones before. But it does touch on the ideas of balance that they were thinking about from early on, and it does not really contradict what each movie has set up along the way.)

 

theres a few palpatine lines that werent used in the movie.

in the final trailer, palpatine says "and now... your coming together is your undoing" (0:55 )


in a tv spot, palpatine says "your journey nears its end"

at 0:23

who do you guys think that was referring to ? im thinking it could be when palps tells kylo to "find the girl. and bring her to me. your journey nears its end."

but i could see it being used to rey before he tells her to take the thrown "your journey nears its end. take the thrown and become the new empress."
leaning toward kylo at the moment.

i wonder if these lines were removed during that last minute rewriting of the movie, or it was just a typical cut of extra lines. idk why they were removed, they were good enough for the trailer but not the movie? lol. the delivery was nice i thought

 

Yeah the problem is that Abrams’ comments very rarely make sense and/or are contradictory. In this instance, we’ve already had the opposite of the heroes journey in the PT I.e. Anakin/Vader. So all that Abrams is offering is his version of Anakin’s story (and Kylo/Ben is no Vader/Anakin). Also, Kylo Ren is quite clearly a villain at the start of TFA… he’s already killing people etc. so the idea that the ST would be some kind of character study into the birth of villainy, is flaky at best. I’d say it’s all typical Abrams… where his concepts are largely unoriginal, half-baked, and he is unwilling to commit to an idea.

It seems to me that Lucasfilm are much more interested in following the Thrawn trilogy than they are the ST… as of course Palpatine being cloned, and the facilities at Mount Tantiss were crucial aspects of the Timothy Zahn books. As for Snoke being the ‘big bad’, I’m pretty sure that will never happen… not least because there is absolutely no drama in the main villain being a copy of a copy of a copy. Plus, it seems that DLF are actually now invested in wanting to create new characters (which is a good thing right?), and take content in ‘newer’ directions. And as this very thread demonstrates, having Snoke or Palpatine be the ‘big bad’ (in new content), will be viewed rather negatively IMO…

 

Filoni fleshed out not only Maul but also Grevious in animated works. He has a history of taking Palpatine’s underlings and fleshing them out more. Snoke seems like he will be perfect to be next in line for Filoni to tackle.

 

Maul and Grievous weren't proxies for a much better character. Snoke is i.e. Palpatine. The only real thing any writer can do (and who know... they may do this), is to sever the connections to Palaptine, and have Snoke be his own person... but that doesn't flesh out the ST, it undermines it and will make Palaptines' inclusion in the ST that much worse.

 

Snoke is a sentient being though. He was just made and taught by Palpatine and guided by him. It would all be similar to how he used Dooku, Grevious, Maul, etc to further his own goals for his desire for galactic control while he operated from the shadows. They could even have holo chats for all we know.

I can’t speak to what it is due to spoilers but there’s already a leak from a credible reporter regarding the next season of Mando that seems to tie directly toward the ST.

This is a tremendous opportunity to make Snoke feel more like previous Palpatine pawns ahead to better connect the sequels and the FO work Palpatine’s previous plans and the history of the saga while also setting him up as a powerful new force user with the odd quirk to him that is slightly different from Palpatine and have that enter this timeline in his own right.

My guess is that next season will probably end with them realizing a being like him has been created but that we won’t actually get to him until the season after this one.

 

Snoke is a puppet without knowing he is a puppet.

 

He shoulda read the TROS script in advance, it’s the only way he’d know.

 

Snoke is literally Palpatine though isn’t he? Or that’s what TROS tell us… ‘every voice inside your head’ etc. So he is Palpatine by proxy… It would be like doing a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, and instead of focusing on the man behind the curtain, they instead thought it better to focus on the green faced illusion that’s projected above the dais. I’m sure there will be references to Palpatine, and I’m sure we’ll see Palpatine’s clones too (as this is all part of what’s in the ‘Thrawn Trilogy’) but I seriously doubt Snoke will be the big bad, or even a returning villain, as I do think DLF have learnt some things since the ST… and this thread shows how unpopular Palpatine’s inclusion in the ST was, let alone the 2nd tier Snoke.

 

Yeah, if Palps is impersonating Snoke's exact voice inside Kylo's head, that means what Snoke says in real life has to match up with that voice and with whatever he tells Kylo at bedtime. Which means Snoke isn't his own being. He's totally just Palpatine, transmitting through the force, and talking through a Snoke meat puppet.

And it's beyond dumb. I'm still curious why Palpatine doesn't just transmit his Sith Soul or whatever into Snoke, who can leave Exogol just fine, has insane amount of force power, is 9 feet tall, and can do all the things Palpatine wants to do personally but can't because he can't leave Exogol. Even if he wants Kylo or Rey eventually, just ... become Snoke for a period of time. Better than hanging out on Exogol on a stick.

But that would mean the movies have to make sense.

 

It’s so badly written that the more they try and make it make sense, the more stupid and inept it becomes. It’s why, IMO, they’ll reference characters like Snoke, but I think they’ll create new characters (villains and heroes) to take the existing stories in different directions e.g. The Mandalorian etc.