The Rise of Skywalker Novelization Details What Palpatine Went Through When He ‘Died’ in ROTJ

With Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker barely explaining Palpatine's return, the novelization of the film has been tasked to fill in any blanks that the movie has glossed over. What's interesting is, the book also has an account of what Palpatine did as he was falling through the Death Star shaft in Return of the Jedi.

Read it here.

As it turns out, Palpatine had been preparing for Vader's betrayal, and he somehow transferred his consciousness to a body that was being ‘assembled' in Exegol. The body that fell in the Death Star had been dead before it hit the ground, and Palpatine had found his mind inside a vessel that was deteriorating and ‘incomplete'—hence the need for a new body which would be completed by the Force Dyad i.e., Rey and Ben Solo.

While I have several problems with the film, I admit this does make things a bit more ‘sensible.' It doesn't completely refute the success of Luke and the others from the original trilogy, and it kind of explains why Palpatine has been missing all this time.

Personally, I would have loved to have Ben Solo become the central villain this time around, but admittedly it would have been hard to write around it. You'd think they could have asked for Rian Johnson's help, seeing as he had help set-up the conclusion; heck, they should have taken Colin Trevorrow's script and just tweaked it a bit. I prefer a lot more of that script from what we got in the final movie.

For now, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is set to hit digital on March 17 and Blu-Ray/DVD on March 31.

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