Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker - 12 Biggest Unanswered Questions

12. How Did Palpatine Return & Create A Massive Fleet In Secret?

The Rise of Skywalker raises perhaps the most pressing question right out of the gate, by resurrecting Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) in the opening title crawl and offering only vague hints at how the iconic baddie was brought back to life.

We see that Palps is hooked up to a mechanical arm which appears to be pumping him with chemicals, with some help from a fleet of cloaked Sith druids, but the more precise mechanics of his revival are kept frustratingly vague.

Palpatine implies to Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) that he harnessed deep Dark Side Force powers to return, even invoking a line of dialogue he previously spoke to Anakin (Hayden Christensen) while discussing Darth Plagueis. This might suggest that he, like Plagueis, managed to use the Force to negate death.

But even if we accept that possibility, it doesn't begin to explain how he was able to secretly build a colossal Sith army in secret, on a blustery planet with little shelter where construction of said fleet would be extremely difficult if not impossible.

Obviously the real answer here is "because movie," and J.J. Abrams clearly hoped fans would be so delighted at Palpatine's return that they wouldn't question the how and why. Oh, how wrong he was.