'Somehow Palpatine Returned' - Making Sense Of Star Wars' Most Hated Line

We're several years on from the release of "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker," and we still can't stop talking about it. Maybe that's because Lucasfilm still hasn't put out a new Star Wars movie since, though many have been rumored, announced, canceled, and delayed in the interim. Steven Knight officially left his role as screenwriter for the theoretically still upcoming Rey (Daisy Ridley) new Jedi Order movie. The franchise is set to return to the big screen in 2026 with Jon Favreau's "The Mandalorian & Grogu."

The gap between films has certainly played a role. But it's also true that "The Rise of Skywalker," and the sequel trilogy as a whole, left a weird taste in the mouths of many fans. While "The Force Awakens" and "The Last Jedi" both received great reviews and made tons of money at the box office, becoming two of the highest-grossing movies of all time, the trilogy struggled to stick the landing. The last-second return of Emperor Sheev Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) has become indicative of the main public grievance: a lack of overarching narrative continuity papered over by fan service.

From the start, J.J. Abrams seemed more interested in the aesthetics of Star Wars than in establishing new, concrete material. The nature of the First Order, the New Republic, and the state of the galaxy as a whole are left woefully unaddressed in "The Force Awakens," and "The Last Jedi" moves in a more thematically driven direction. Lucasfilm's apparent catch-all fix was to "somehow" bring Darth Sidious back from the dead, and lots of Star Wars fans are still mad about it. But is the infamous line that announced Sheev's resurrection really as bad as people say? Let's get into it.

"Somehow, Palpatine returned" is a line spoken by Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) very early on in "The Rise of Skywalker." After the opening action set pieces of Kylo Ren meeting Palpatine and our heroes evading First Order pursuers, Poe delivers the news, recently acquired from Resistance intelligence agents — and later revealed to have been sent by General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) — that the old Sith Lord is back and gathering power. In a vacuum, it's a totally normal line. The Resistance has received word that Palpatine is back, which defies explanation. How could someone so old, so long dead, and so thoroughly decimated by an exploding Death Star II, still be alive? Hence the "somehow."

The line is immediately followed up by a more specific guess as to Palp's method of resurrection, courtesy of new cast addition Beaumont Kin (Dominic Monaghan): "Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew." Why an entirely new character who's never even introduced in the film is the one to deliver this pretty important line remains a mystery, but ol' Beau basically hits the nail on the head. As has been elaborated on in numerous Star Wars stories since, Palpatine spent years before his downfall conducting all manner of experiments trying to secure that which his former master, Darth Plagueis, could never grasp — immortality.

It's been the primary burden of all Star Wars writers since 2019 to add more context and retroactive buildup to Palpatine's return. "The Bad Batch," "The Mandalorian," and more have all been bent to serve that purpose, but some fans still hold a grudge against the flippancy with which the dark lord's return was first announced.

After the "Rise of Skywalker" premiere, "Somehow, Palpatine returned" became a rallying cry for disgruntled fans. While it makes sense that Poe can't explain what happened, many saw the line as a show of guilt by Disney — an accidental meta acknowledgement of lazy writing and ill-conceived fan service. YouTube videos clipping the line garnered millions of views, and it quickly became inescapable in any online space discussing the state of Star Wars. The meme was born, and it still hasn't properly been put back in the bottle.

Of course, the backlash was about more than just a line. It was about the whole concept of Palpatine being brought back with no clue or context in either of the prior two movies. You expect the third entry in a trilogy to be hugely climactic, but because the Exegol plot in "The Rise of Skywalker" was all new, many felt it didn't carry the proper weight of a multi-year adventure. While Darth Sidious is an iconic and beloved villain, his sudden importance was jarring, leading to responses that ranged from confused and disappointed to downright angry.

We all know that the most vocal and obnoxious segments of the Star Wars fandom care more about the grift than about the objective quality of the franchise. Plenty of those anti-fans found a woman to blame, or several. But the better-adjusted in Star Wars circles still took major issue with the Palpatine twist, prompting Lucasfilm into a multi-year reparative campaign. The question now is, did it work?

Take away all the retcons, the lack of buildup, the polarizing nature of the sequel trilogy as a whole, and the insufferable grifters hating any and everything Lucasfilm puts out, and Palpatine's return isn't so wild. In fact, it fits pretty well within the larger tapestry of Star Wars. Sidious was always obsessed with immortality. As he tells Anakin in "Revenge of the Sith," once a Sith Lord reaches a certain level of power, as happened with Plagueis, his only real fear becomes losing that power.

It makes sense that Palpatine would have a backup plan, and a backup for his backup plan. All of the comic storylines and "Bad Batch" episodes about Force cloning and Sith science, the implications of arcane sorcery, and the hidden cult in the far reaches of space work with the existing image of Palpatine — a man determined to make himself a god. The Force is life, so there's no greater distortion of it than trying to halt the natural cycle of life itself. Had the sequel trilogy worked in more natural buildup, and had "The Rise of Skywalker" not so clearly been ashamed of its predecessor's more bold choices, Palpatine's return would have played just fine.

Honestly, it's very Star Wars to drop major plot details in the opening title crawl and leave the audience in the middle of things to figure them out for themselves. George Lucas did the same thing with the Trade Federation and Republic dynamic in "The Phantom Menace," and again with Count Dooku and the Separatists in "Attack of the Clones." The franchise has always relied on retroactive, supplementary storytelling to fill in the gaps. Even still, that Palpatine twist certainly could have used a bit more time in the oven.