Other Versions of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Further Explained Palpatine’s Resurrection

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker revived Emperor Palpatine for the final entry in the Skywalker Saga and, while some of the nitty-gritty details about how he could still be alive after the events of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi were glossed over, the film’s editor, Maryann Brandon, recently revealed that some versions of the film toyed with being more explicit about his resurrection for the film. The filmmaker might not have detailed exactly what those narrative specifics might have been, but it at least confirms that the character’s trajectory was developed to account for that backstory, which could eventually be revealed.

“It was kind of a delicate balance and went back and forth a lot about how much we wanted to reveal,” Brandon shared with The Huffington Post. “Some scenes changed quite a bit, the way that we wanted to present it to the audience. In the end, we ended up showing a lot less of it than we started with.”

Fans first learned that Palpatine would be involved in the new film when the first teaser debuted, though it was unclear how involved he would be in the narrative. As audiences have learned, the film quickly sees Kylo Ren discovering a still-living Palpatine, who claims he was the figure guiding him throughout his life as his physical form is seemingly being sustained by complicated medical apparatus. Viewers were left to speculate about exactly how he could have fallen down a reactor chasm on the Death Star II, escaped, and survived in the far reaches of space, with the film quickly moving on to the more pertinent narrative components.

With the film having to conclude the 40-year journey of the narrative, there were a number of threads it had to weave together that prevented the finished project from detailing this journey.

“There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on,” Brandon explained. “I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know.”

She also noted that the cut scenes included “a little more information about it, what was keeping [Palpatine] alive” though their inclusion “seemed to go off topic.”

Whether or not these scenes will ever be released or if fans will approve of those explanations is yet to be determined.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now.

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