Until Disney decides to release another trilogy in the mainline series, Star Wars Episode
IX: The Rise of Skywalker is the final bow on the 42-year package that is the Skywalker
Saga.
And while it answers a lot of longstanding questions, it also raises just as many questions
as it answers.
Here are some of the big ones, and — of course — spoilers are ahead.
One burning question the movie answers within its opening minutes is whether Emperor Palpatine
is alive.
And he is!
He's not a force ghost and not identified as a clone.
He's the full-on flesh-and-blood Sheev Palpatine, being kept alive by a very tall, mechanical
life support system.
Nothing he communicates to Kylo Ren, Rey or General Pryde mention any words about how
he survived being thrown down a giant pit at the end of Return of the Jedi.
Nobody bothers to ask him, either.
Everybody who now knows the emperor is back including Luke Skywalker's force ghost, who
you'd think would really be curious to learn how Palpatine made it out of that pickle just
kind of rolls with it.
Even the Resistance spends only a few minutes being incredulous before simply accepting
Palpatine is alive and kicking.
"No.
No.
You will die!"
Rise of Skywalker's biggest revelation is the truth of Rey's parentage.
After meeting Palpatine on the Sith planet Exegol, Kylo Ren learns that what he knew
about Rey's parents was only partially true: Yes, they sold her.
Yes, they were basically nobody.
But it was all intentional.
They made themselves anonymous and left Rey behind because her father was Emperor Palpatine's
son, making Rey the Emperor's granddaughter.
But hold up a minute: Emperor Palpatine had a son?
When?
Let's try to work it out: If the Emperor's family ages like other humans, Rey is probably
in her early 20s by the time Rise of Skywalker takes place, which would mean her father would
probably have been born 40 to 50 years earlier, given how he looks in the flashbacks.
So Palpatine Jr. would have probably been born sometime between the prequel trilogy
and the original trilogy.
So where was he during the original trilogy?
Who was his mother?
Was the younger Palpatine a clone, like his illegitimate son in the old Extended Universe?
It isn't addressed, so your guesses are as good as anyone else's.
"Long have I waited."
That ominous statement from Emperor Palpatine is essentially his greeting to his granddaughter,
Rey.
But why spend decades just sitting around on Exegol?
Presumably he was waiting for his fleet of planet-exploding Star Destroyers to be finished,
but we're also told he tried to have Rey brought to him when she was just a child.
So what really was his plan?
Why did he need to create Snoke to be his puppet?
Could he not have shown back up and started the First Order himself?
Perhaps he was too physically weak, but he was hearty enough to create all those Snoke
clones.
Why did he have to use Kylo Ren as his intermediary rather than going directly to Rey?
She may have been well-hidden for a while, but eventually she made herself very well
known.
Why did Palpatine's plan have to be so complicated?
"Sometimes I just don't understand human behavior."
Rey and the gang find a dagger on Ochi's ship that has the directions to one of the Sith
wayfinders written on it.
But there's a catch: it's written in the ancient Sith language, and that's not something they
teach in scavenger school on Jakku.
C-3PO is able to read it, but can't relay a translation to his pals because his programming
forbids it.
When he starts to explain that there are some legalities behind that prohibition involving
the Galactic Senate, Poe cuts him off before he can get into the details.
Our heroes get around that roadblock by having droidsmith Babu Frik do a potentially dangerous
and definitely unethical procedure to extract the information.
But let's back up a bit: How does C-3PO know Sith?
By the time Anakin Skywalker built the droid from spare parts, Sithspeak would seemingly
have only been a language used by the highly secretive Sith Order, which had been in hiding
for hundreds of years.
Maybe C-3PO's parts were really, really old, and from a time when Sith was a lot more common.
Or maybe his language software is just really, really good.
Sheev Palpatine knows how to play to a crowd.
He drew thunderous applause while liberty died, remember?
He similarly gets his audience of black-robed figures white hot with excitement as he dares
Rey to strike him down on Exegol.
He has them eating right out of his horribly disfigured hands.
Just one question, though: Who are the people in the stands?
They're almost assuredly Sith of one type or another, since Exegol is the secret Sith
homeworld, but are they living creatures?
Are they more beings he created, like he did Snoke?
Are they the spirits of all the Sith who lived in the past?
Palpatine says he contains all of the Sith within him.
Is that them?
Did they build his fleet of planet-exploding star destroyers?
Where did they go?
Rey claims the name Skywalker at the end of the movie, making her at least one of the
Skywalkers who rise in the movie.
She uses the combined force energy of every Jedi who ever put on a robe to defeat her
grandfather, deflecting his own force lightning back at him.
And she helps redeem Ben Solo.
She does a lot of good things.
But Palpatine makes the deal very clear: If she kills him, she becomes the empress.
So even though she doesn't absorb his life force like he planned, isn't she the empress?
By birthright?
By the order of succession?
There's no Republic to go back to any longer.
They got wiped out.
Sure, Rey may just dissolve everything and start a new New Republic, but there's a slew
of First Order and Final Order loyalists out there desperate for a leader to tell them
what to do.
It may be Rey's responsibility to say, if nothing else, "Hit the bricks."
"OK."
Heavy is the head that wears the hood, right?
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