Star Wars Actor: The Emperor May Appear in Spinoffs

During a new interview, actor Ian McDiarmid (who played Senator Palpatine, the man who would become Vader's dark emperor, in the Star Wars films) speculated that in spite of having died in Return of the Jedi, his character may not be finished just yet. "I'm sort of interested in any future development he might have," McDiarmid told SciFi Now. "Unfortunately, as you probably know, he died at the end of Episode VI, Vader sent him to cosmic hell so he's not going to feature in any of the new Disney ones, I don't think. On the other hand they've got lots of exciting ideas for spin-offs about separate characters and so on, and then there is the television series which George has talked about and decided to make into being for a number of years, and that takes place between Episodes III and IV when the Emperor is very much alive. So I think he probably does have a future." Speculation about those spinoffs has more or less centered on characters like Han Solo and Yoda, whose relationship to the Empire and the Emperor is tangential at best--but certainly McDiarmid isn't wrong there could still be some room. And if popular Dark Side characters like Darth Vader or Darth Maul were to get their own films, it would have to be more or less a given.