While The Rise of Skywalker answered a number of the saga's lingering questions, it also
presented a few of its own.
We can't promise you'll understand every part of Episode IX after delving into our explanations,
but we hope we can help you feel at least a little less confused.
The Rise of Skywalker wastes no time in telling us that Sheev Palpatine, the Emperor from
the original trilogy that we all presumed was dead after the end of Return of the Jedi,
is actually alive.
In fact, Palpatine has been pulling the strings of the First Order this whole time.
"The First Order arose from the Dark Side."
While we never get a detailed explanation for Palpatine's survival, we should've known
better than to assume a fall would kill a strong Force user like Palpatine, especially
since both Darth Maul and Luke Skywalker survived pretty serious falls in past Star Wars canon.
After Return of the Jedi, Palpatine slunk off to the Sith planet of Exegol, where Sith
loyalists used machines to artificially prolong his life, similar to how Darth Vader was stabilized
after his battle with Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith.
Once on Exegol, Palpatine bided his time in the shadows, waiting until his fleet was strong
enough to reveal itself.
The opening crawl of Rise of Skywalker mentions that newly-minted Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
is searching for Palpatine, "determined to destroy any threat to his power."
The film then reveals Kylo Ren on the surface of a glowing red planet, slaughtering a forest
full of faceless opponents before ultimately locating a Sith Wayfinder that once belonged
to his grandfather, Darth Vader.
That Wayfinder reveals the way to Exegol, where Kylo Ren confronts Palpatine and learns
the truth of Rey's parentage.
The battle for the Wayfinder takes place on Mustafar, the volcano planet where Anakin
Skywalker once dueled his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
This time, Kylo Ren is fighting members of the Alazmec of Winsit, a cult of Vader-worshipers
guarding his Sith fortress, who also planted the unlikely forest of irontrees where the
battle takes place.
Unfortunately for the Alazmec, Kylo Ren had no interest in explaining to them why he needed
to access the ruins of Fortress Vader, and found it easier to cut a smoldering path through
his grandfather's acolytes than to simply ask permission to pass.
Palpatine assembles a massive Final Order fleet before The Rise of Skywalker, but it's
not entirely clear how he does it.
We know that Palpatine was able to channel the power of all the Sith who had come before
him, that he was cloning Snokes who were also all presumably strong in the Dark Side of
the Force, and that he had a network of loyalists he was able to tap into throughout the galaxy,
even after his presumed death.
We also know based on the thousands of shrouded figures in the throne room that either Exegol
had a large native population that was loyal to Palpatine, or that he was able to physically
manifest the countless former Sith who resided within him.
Either way, it seems as though Palpatine had a large and powerful workforce at his decaying
fingertips, and 30 years of secrecy in which to build his army.
As for where he acquired the resources to construct the ships, the Rise of Skywalker
Visual Dictionary confirms that Palpatine was siphoning supplies from the First Order
through loyalists he had embedded within its ranks.
Following the death of Luke Skywalker at the end of The Last Jedi, his twin sister Leia
Organa took it upon herself to train the Force-sensitive Rey in the ways of the Jedi.
This might come as a bit of a surprise, considering we never saw Leia receive any Jedi training
herself, despite indications of her Force sensitivity throughout the Star Wars films.
In The Rise of Skywalker, we learn that when Leia was younger, she actually did train as
a Jedi with Luke, and essentially completed her training, even constructing her own lightsaber.
However, on the final day of her training, Leia had a vision that her Jedi path would
lead to the death of her son, which caused her to turn away from becoming a Jedi.
So while Leia technically isn't a Jedi herself, she has all the knowledge, training, and capabilities
necessary to continue Rey's instruction where her brother had left off.
When the Resistance learns that Palpatine is alive, they worry that they won't be able
to stop him, since he's on Exegol, and no one knows how to get there.
However, Rey remembers that Luke Skywalker had attempted to find Exegol many years earlier.
While Luke hadn't actually found the Sith planet, he had tracked the Wayfinder that
revealed its location to a desert planet called Pasaana, where the trail had gone cold.
However, when Rey leads her team to Pasaana, instead of the Wayfinder, they find another
clue.
It turns out that many years ago, a Sith loyalist named Ochi was tasked with bringing the young
Rey to Palpatine on Exegol, and he carried a dagger inscribed with the coordinates of
the Wayfinder.
But before Ochi could find Rey, he accidentally rode his speeder into the sinking fields of
Pasaana, and died buried beneath the planet's surface, along with the Sith dagger.
After finding Ochi's Sith dagger, C-3PO reveals that while he can read the coordinates inscribed
on it, he is incapable of translating them for the rest of the team.
As Threepio explains, his programming forbids him from translating the Sith language under
any circumstances due to a rule passed by the Imperial Senate, which may date all the
way back to the prequels.
As we learned in Episodes One through Three, Palpatine spent years manipulating the Senate
from within in order to serve his dark purposes, and eventually dissolved the Senate entirely.
Knowing this, it makes sense that Palpatine would've enacted legislation making it impossible
for droids to translate Sith, enabling him to keep his true identity and master plan
hidden from his peers.
When Rey and her friends prepare to leave Pasaana, Chewbacca gets captured and loaded
onto a transport by First Order troops, while a horrified Finn looks on.
Concerned, Finn runs to tell Rey, and they both watch as a transport takes flight from
behind a large rock formation.
Rey tries to use the Force to pull the transport back to the ground, but after meeting opposition
from Kylo Ren, she becomes frustrated and lets out a surge of energy that causes the
transport to explode, which she thinks means that Chewie has died.
Almost immediately, we find out that Chewie is actually still alive, and is being held
captive on a First Order ship.
General Hux mentions that there was actually a second First Order transport on Pasaana,
which was the one Finn saw Chewie being loaded onto.
He must not have seen the second one due to the rock formations dotting the landscape.
Since Rey, Finn, and their companions left Pasaana immediately after the transport exploded,
they missed when the second one containing Chewie took off.
Early on, The Rise of Skywalker sets up the intriguing mystery of a spy within the First
Order who is passing crucial bits of information to the Resistance.
This spy is later revealed to be none other than the sniveling General Hux, much to the
shock of Finn and Poe, who are completely blindsided by the First Order officer's turn.
After all, Hux spent the entirety of The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi fervently opposing
the Resistance and fighting to advance the First Order's agenda.
So what changed?
Based on Hux's explanation to Finn, he still isn't actually a friend to the Resistance,
and has no investment in their ultimate victory.
But as much as he hates the Resistance, he hates Kylo Ren more, and seems to have been
motivated to switch sides following Ren's ascension to Supreme Leader.
When Ren took Snoke's place, Hux was disgusted to find his power significantly diminished,
and seemed to hope that by aiding the Resistance, he could topple Kylo Ren and subsequently
seize more power for himself.
Between the completion of The Last Jedi and the beginning of production on The Rise of
Skywalker, Carrie Fisher, who has played Leia Organa since A New Hope in 1977, passed away.
However, since Leia was still very much alive in the Star Wars universe, director J.J. Abrams
announced that he would be reworking The Rise of Skywalker's storyline to incorporate previously
unused footage of Fisher from The Force Awakens to finish Leia's journey.
This resulted in Leia being present in the first act of Rise of Skywalker as Rey's teacher
and the leader of the Resistance, then dying around the midpoint of the film after reaching
out to her son one final time with the Force.
While Leia's ending was largely dictated by the available archival footage of Fisher,
her death still provided a bittersweet and fitting send-off to her character.
Although it appears that Leia only transmits the name "Ben" through the Force, her son's
reaction indicates that he received more than that.
Perhaps it isn't only his name that Leia Force-projects to him, but her feelings of motherly love
and acceptance, letting him know that even after all he's done, she still considers him
her son.
Leia's last-ditch effort to pull her son back from the Dark Side pays off, but the effort
of reaching him takes every bit of remaining strength she has.
She dies, becoming one with the Force, just like her brother before her.
At first glance, it might seem as though Kylo Ren's transformation back into Ben Solo is
confusingly abrupt.
But upon closer examination, Ben's decision to abandon his Dark Side persona is something
he's been struggling with for a long time, both in previous films and in the first half
of The Rise of Skywalker.
Before his duel with Rey, Kylo tells her that he can never go back to his mother.
The Dark Side is the only option available to him.
But when Leia contacts him during their duel, he realizes the truth, he could always go
back, and the only one holding him back was himself.
Afterward, he imagines his deceased father, Han Solo, who tells him Kylo Ren is dead,
and counters every argument he can think of to remain on his dark path.
Finally, when it seems as though Ben wants to apologize for all the evil he's done, Han
replies with his iconic, "I know," communicating his enduring love and forgiveness.
Afterward, Ben tosses his Sith lightsaber into the ocean, having finally found the strength
to turn back to the Light Side thanks to the combined efforts of his loving parents.
Long before the beginning of The Force Awakens, Palpatine was responsible for the creation
of Snoke, along with an indeterminate number of identical Snoke clones.
Palpatine maneuvered Snoke into a position of power as Supreme Leader of the First Order,
and all of Snoke's orders in the first two films actually came from Palpatine.
While Palpatine was secretly shaping the First Order, he was also searching for his granddaughter,
Rey, whom he considered his heir.
He sent out bounty hunters to find her, but their efforts failed.
He didn't know where she was until she started her Force training under Luke Skywalker.
He then tasked Kylo Ren with finding and killing her, but he never intended for him to succeed.
Instead, he hoped his efforts would propel Rey to lean further into the Dark Side, preparing
her to take over for Palpatine as Empress.
Once Rey faced him on Exegol, Palpatine tempted her to strike him down and take his place,
just as he once taunted Luke Skywalker.
Palpatine claimed that killing him would transfer his spirit to Rey, along with all the past
Sith, and they would all rule over the galaxy as one.
After Palpatine believes he's won, Rey again attempts the Force exercise that's been eluding
her throughout the whole film, trying to channel the Jedi who have come before her.
This time, it works, and Rey is strengthened by a number of Jedi voices feeding her encouragement
that enables her to face Palpatine again.
If some of those voices sounded familiar, there's a reason for that.
The Rise of Skywalker brings back every significant Jedi from past Star Wars movies, including
Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, Ewan McGregor and Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi,
Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn, Frank Oz as Yoda, Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu, and of course,
Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker.
Additionally, the scene includes voice actors from Star Wars animated series who portrayed
now-deceased Jedi, namely Ashley Eckstein as Ahsoka Tano, Freddie Prinze Jr. as Kanan
Jarrus, Olivia D'Abo as Luminara Unduli, Jennifer Hale as Aayla Secura, and Angelique Perrin
as Adi Gallia.
The combined strength of Rey and the spirits of the past Jedi is enough for Rey to reflect
Palpatine's Dark energy back on himself, killing him.
Since Palpatine technically causes his own death, his spirit doesn't pass to Rey as he'd
planned, and the Sith line is ended.
"No.
No.
You will die!"
Several times throughout The Rise of Skywalker, characters mention that Rey and Kylo Ren make
up a "dyad in the Force," a new term we've never heard in previous Star Wars films.
Dyads are extremely rare, and the two of them together can wield the Force in powerful ways
that haven't been seen in generations.
Kylo Ren speculates that their unique nature is due to them being the grandchildren of
two of the greatest Force-users in history, Anakin Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine.
When Palpatine realizes that Rey and Ben are stronger together than either of them are
separately, he heals his decrepit body by draining their combined Force energy, then
tries to weaken them by splitting them up.
Rey is still able to defeat Palpatine by channeling the strength of past Jedi, but the effort
completely drains and kills her.
However, Ben is able to revive Rey by transferring all of his energy to her through the Force,
which ultimately kills him.
Before he dies, though, he and Rey are able to share a few grateful moments of life together,
likely made possible by the strength of their shared bond.
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