Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker - 26 WTF Moments

26. Palpatine's Return Is (Mostly) Unexplained

Back at the Star Wars Celebration this past April, it was revealed that Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) would be appearing in The Rise of Skywalker, yet most of the film's marketing played coy with revealing the finer details of his revival.

But in yet another case of J.J. Abrams' "mystery box" failing to deliver, Palpatine's ultimate role in the sequel is shockingly vague and ambiguous.

For starters, he's randomly introduced in the film's opening crawl, which refers to a mysterious broadcast Palpatine recently made on Fortnite of all things.

And though Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) naturally asks Palpatine about the nature of his resurrection, the Emperor speaks only vaguely about the Dark Side making it possible for him to return.

We do see that he's attached to a mechanical arm of some kind which, horrifyingly, appears to be keeping him alive as some sort of a zombie-like phantom, but for the majority of the movie Palpatine is just there, being evil regardless of whether or not his revival makes any sense at all.

That's to say nothing of the dubious plausibility of Palpatine ass-pulling an entire army out of nowhere on a remote planet with inhospitable conditions for constructing pretty much anything.