10 Awful Movie Death Retcons EVERYONE Hated

Star Wars' overarching villain Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) was of course killed by Darth Vader (David Prowse) at the end of Return of the Jedi when he was thrown down a reactor shaft.

All the same, fans were curious to see how Palpatine's survival would be explained in The Rise of Skywalker, yet the filmmakers basically opted to subvert this expectation altogether and just... not really explain it.

The sequel opens with a title crawl explaining that Palpatine is back, having broadcast a message across the galaxy which is heard not in the movie but, inexplicably, the video game Fortnite.

Palps is effectively brought back as a zombie-puppet shadow of his former self with the help of Sith cultists, and while this is further explored in the surrounding novels, within the film itself we get maddeningly little context for how Palpatine's death was undone.

It's so jarringly unexplained that the movie itself even has the infamous, widely parodied quote from Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) - "Somehow Palpatine returned."

Ultimately bringing Palpatine back felt like a desperate move to try and restore some fan goodwill following the polarising reception to The Last Jedi, no matter how little sense it made, or how bringing Palpatine back betrayed everything his death meant for the heroes in the first place.

Ian McDiarmid clearly had a blast reprising the role once more, and God bless him for that, but on a story level Palpatine's revival felt like ropey fan fiction that tripped and fell into the franchise proper.