As beloved as Star Wars may be, the dialogue isn’t always great. No-one has been more open about that fact than Harrison Ford, who (in)famously stood up to George Lucas himself while shooting the original trilogy. Dialogue in the prequels often comes in for criticism; Anakin’s dislike of sand often gets mentioned as something of a low-point. But few moments have landed quite so badly as “Somehow, Palpatine returned,” Oscar Isaac’s line in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
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Now, speaking to Josh Horowitz, Oscar Isaac has revealed just how bad that line really was. According to Isaac, this dialogue was added during reshoots. “We had to do reshoots… Those were, like, those surgical strikes where you come in and… they’re scrambling, trying to get everything going, and that was a new addition at the end.” Isaac admits he never imagined that line would become quite so emblematic of the entire film, but confesses, “I committed to the exasperation, that’s for sure.”
Why “Somehow, Palpatine Returned” Got Added to The Rise of Skywalker
There’s something darkly amusing about learning this entire scene was a reshoot, added – according to Isaac – while the creative team “scrambled” to make sense of the movie. The Rise of Skywalker centered itself on Palpatine’s resurrection, but it seems Lucasfilm didn’t believe it had been explained sufficiently. Incredibly, the solution was to add in a vague scene that lampshades the problem. Poe Dameron’s dialogue was probably intended as setup for Beaumont Kin’s explanation, but the emotional weight lies in Poe’s original comment.
Star Wars has spent the last seven years trying to explain away the end of the sequel trilogy. The Bad Batch essentially pivoted into setup courtesy of its Project Necromancer arc; Necromancer is the code-name of the project that brought the Emperor back. It’s even been name-dropped in The Mandalorian, with Grogu woven into the story because the Empire wanted to harvest his midi-chlorians. It makes sense for Lucasfilm to build the Palpatine return into the overarching Star Wars timeline, but the sheer amount of effort has again served to highlight all the problems.
Sadly, production of the Star Wars sequel trilogy was far from smooth. John Boyega has been particularly open about his frustrations, but Oscar Isaac is increasingly acknowledging them as well. It’s safe to say that an actor of his caliber knew “Somehow, Palpatine returns” wasn’t a good sign, especially in a reshoot, and that alarm bells would have been ringing. To be fair, by that point it’s entirely possible Lucasfilm too had begun to realize the scale of the problem, but had committed too much to the story to abandon it now.
In truth, it would have taken a much bigger rewrite to make the story work. Star Wars can handle resurrections; Darth Maul has proved that, now starring in his own animated TV show despite being killed in The Phantom Menace. But there needs to be some sort of explanation, and the story has to feel as though it’s worth it. Sadly, The Rise of Skywalker just couldn’t pull it off.
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