10 Biggest Star Wars Retcons

5. Somehow, Palpatine Returned

Star Wars The Rise Of Skywalker Palpatine
Disney

Though The Last Jedi left audiences divided over the direction of Disney's Star Wars sequels, the revelation that Emperor Palpatine was set to return for The Rise of Skywalker was exciting for fans of all ages.

Unfortunately though, the explanation for how Palps survived his "death" in Return of the Jedi was lazy at best, with Poe Dameron's line "Somehow, Palpatine returned" serving as the movie's only attempt to fill in the blanks.

Clearly, writers Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams found it difficult to come up with a decent explanation, and that's probably because Palpatine was never intended to return from the grave - despite what Kathleen Kennedy might tell you.

As per actor Ian McDiarmid, George Lucas actually shot down the idea of a Palpatine return while making Episode VI, bluntly telling McDiarmid "No, he’s dead."

In addition, Colin Trevorrow - who was originally attached to direct The Rise of Skywalker - has said that bringing back Palpatine was "something I never considered", meaning that the Sith Lord's comeback wasn't added until Abrams and Terrio boarded the project in 2017.

Retconning Palpatine's death then forced The Rise of Skywalker to retcon Snoke's entire character. In the first two movies, he was clearly meant to be someone new, with a mysterious agenda of his own - not a puppet grown in a jar.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!