The dead speak! The official Star Wars website actually! Today's blog post by Emily Shkoukani, a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group, explains The Contingency, which is the canon name for how Emperor Palpatine died and was brought back to life. According to the site, this plan was in place before Darth Vader sent him down a shaft on Death Star 2.AdvertisementThis is both a good and bad thing if it all sounds familiar. This is bad because it's all important information that hasn't been collected in one location (until now). That would have made the big question of "How did Palpatine return?" at the start of The Rise of Skywalker more understandable. If you are familiar with the plot, then perhaps you have read it on this website. James Whitbrook had previously delved into Palpatines' plansomething that was teased in multiple novels, TV series, comics, and video games. This culminated in his Episode IX return.Star Wars Inside Intel has the entire story. You can read it at this link. Here's the complete beat-by-beat breakdown of Palpatines contingency. We know Palpatine was a complex planner and had a penchant to do evil. It's not surprising that Palpatine had a plan to raise his body in the event of his death. His consciousness was transferred to Exegol to do cloning experiments. He enlisted the help of some key Empire officials to destroy the old ways and introduce the new. Operation: Cinder is one example of a piece that gets named-dropped in Star Wars canon.While plans were being made to destroy the Empire, Palpatine, a weakly cloned body on Exegoldid, began to do a few things. He began to build a new army, the Final Order, and searched for a vessel worthy of his rebirth. Rey, his granddaughter, was the one he finally found. Although her parents tried to hide Rey, she was eventually drawn back into the story. It all started with the clone of her grandfather (Snoke), which, through Luke, Kylo Ren and others, set the wheels in motion to confront her grandfather. It is unclear if all that was part the plan or just Force; this story isn't a Swiss watch. Rey could have joined the Sith Lord and become the Dark Rey that we see in the movie, but she instead uses the Force to destroy him once and for all. End of Contingency.Or so we think. It's an interesting story, but it feels very much like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Lucasfilm, for example, had half of the puzzle pieces and just put them all together in a way which makes sense but doesn't make sense. There are still many questions, including one that is entirely new: Did Palpatines Contingency have its Contingency? The answer, as it stands now, is likely no. However, what if another filmmaker has an idea? It's possible to do anything. We have learned a lot from bringing Palpatine back into life.For more information, visit the Star Wars official website. Also, check out our 2019 article.Correction: 8:52 ET, 8/3/2022: This post has been edited so that Darth Vader, not Luke Skywalker, is the one who threw Palpatine off a shaft on Death Star 2. An error we regret, but which also allows us to make the greatest io9 corrections of all time.AdvertisementAre you curious about where our RSS feed went. The new one can be found here.
