Is Matt Smith Actually In Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker?

6. Young Palpatine Rumours (November 2018)

Matt Smith young Emperor Palpatine Star Wars Episode 9
20th Century Fox/BBC

Even before this particular development, there were rumblings that Palpatine could make his grand cinematic return in The Rise of Skywalker, but this was the first we'd heard about an actor actually stepping into the character's evil, iconic shoes.

It was YouTube's Mr. Sunday Movies who dropped this scoop, revealing that one of his sources had told him that Smith was set to play a young Sheev Palpatine in the film. He also noted that this should be taken as a rumour, because even his source had some uncertainty about the whole thing.

Nonetheless, it was a juicy development, and added even more fuel to those aforementioned rumblings. Smith's pale, gaunt look would be a perfect fit for a younger Palpatine, and since, at this stage, we had no other information about his character, the internet quickly latched on to this idea.

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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!