“Somehow, Palpatine returned.” It is the Star Wars meme to end all memes, used to ridicule the Emperor’s divisive return in The Rise of Skywalker. Most fans reacted negatively to Palpatine’s clone-fueled revival after his “death” at the end of the much-loved Return of the Jedi. But what did Ian McDiarmid, who has played Palpatine / the Emperor for over 40 years, think of the backlash?
In an interview with Variety to celebrate the return of Revenge of the Sith to theaters (a re-release that has seen a huge box office, by the way), McDiarmid shrugged off the backlash, insisting “mine and Palpatine’s logic was entirely reasonable.”
“It seemed entirely probable that Palpatine had plan B,” he insisted. “Even though he was very, very badly damaged, he would be able to be put it together in some form. When I realized I had a sort of astral wheelchair, that was even better. I just had these four guys who whisked me around the studio; I can’t tell you how much fun that was. Daisy was more worried about that than anything else. And then, of course, we had to devise another makeup look, which was even more grotesque than the previous one.”
McDiarmid added, specifically on the backlash to the Emperor’s return: “Well, there’s always something, isn’t there?” he said. “I don’t read that stuff and I’m not online. So it’ll only reach me if someone mentions it. I thought there might be a bit of a fuss about bringing him back. But as I said, mine and Palpatine’s logic was entirely reasonable. This man who was horribly maimed thought maybe one day it might happen to him, and we’ve got to have a plan B. I loved the whole idea that he should come back and be even more powerful than he was before. Though this time, he had to be utterly destroyed. So I think he’s dead.”
The Rise of Skywalker vaguely explains how Palpatine accomplished his grand comeback. When Kylo Ren finds him early in the movie, Emperor Palpatine appears to be a reanimated version of his dead self. So it would seem that he didn’t survive his fall at the end of Return of the Jedi.
But his death clearly didn’t stop him or really even slow him down. As McDiarmid said, Palpatine had a contingency plan in place for just such a scenario. In Rise of Skywalker’s vague explanation of Palpatine’s return, Sheev quotes his ever-so-meme-able words from Revenge of the Sith as he delivers his super-villain monologue where he explains his bonkers master plan to Kylo Ren: “The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities that some would consider to be… unnatural.”
So, ancient Sith magic. That’s how he did it.
It seems unlikely that the core Star Wars fanbase will ever get on board with Palpatine’s return in The Rise of Skywalker, and would prefer to just pretend it never happened. It will be interesting to see if future Star Wars movies do the same. In November, Daisy Ridley’s character Rey Skywalker was reported to be set to appear in “several” upcoming Star Wars films as she’s been deemed the galaxy far, far away’s “most valuable cinematic asset.”
Ridley is already confirmed to be returning in the Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy-directed sequel to The Rise of Skywalker. It will tell the story of Rey as she looks to rebuild the Jedi Order roughly 15 years after the events of that film.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
