It was no secret that Emperor Sheev Palpatine was going to return in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. After all, Ian McDiarmid's cameo was already confirmed during Star Wars Celebration on April 2019. However, there was no direct explanation on who the Sith Lord actually survived after the events in Return of the Jedi where Darth Vader seemingly killed him. Luckily, the truth has finally ben revealed in the new novelization of Star Wars 9.
Star Wars fans have long believed that Emperor Palpatine's fate was clear. In Return of the Jedi, he tried to kill Luke Skywalker when the young Jedi refused to join him in the Dark Side. Palpatine's decision was not taken lightly by Darth Vader, who didn't want the villain to kill his son. Vader then grabbed the Emperor, taking the full blast of the Force lightning before throwing the baddie in the Death Star's reactor, effectively killing him.
Naturally, Emperor Palpatine's return in Star Wars 9 was a huge surprise for fans. This led to several theories on how the Sith Lord possibly survived being thrown into the Death Star reactor with some believing that his powers were so great that he couldn't be killed that easily. Some thought that Palpatine's life essence was actually stored in Darth Vader's helmet that Kylo Ren has been holding on to for several years. However, the truth about the Emperor is actually a lot simpler and just as shocking as most of these The Rise of Skywalker theories.
The novelization of Star Wars 9 finally reveals some interesting key details about most of the scenes that were featured in The Rise of Skywalker. For starters, it shows exactly what happened when Kylo Ren found Emperor Palpatine in Exegol and how the villain has been kept alive all this time.
An excerpt from the novelization of The Rise of Skywalker reads as follows. "All the vials were empty of liquid save one, which was nearly depleted. Kylo peered closer. He'd seen this apparatus before, too, when he'd studied the Clone Wars as a boy. The liquid flowing into the living nightmare before him was fighting a losing battle to sustain the Emperor's putrid flesh."
Interestingly, this confirms that the Palpatine that appeared in Star Wars 9 was not the original one and was simply a clone of the Emperor. This would make sense considering that it was the Sith Lord's idea to create a Clone Trooper army and has probably commissioned the Kaminoans to work on a clone of himself as well. Unfortunately, this means that all those theories about Palpatine's survival were absolutely untrue. Nevertheless, it is good to finally solve one of The Rise of Skywalker's greatest mysteries.
