“Somehow Palpatine returned” – the words of Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron in “Star Wars 9: The Rise of Skywalker” have long since become a meme. For many ‘Star Wars’ fans, it also illustrates how little preparation is made in the new trilogy for the return of the big bad. That has now changed. Palpatine’s resurrection from the dead comes through books, but also series like ‘The Mandalorian” or “The bad batch“More and more substructure.
In a series of interviews celebrating the 25th anniversary of the prequel trilogy, Ian McDiarmid took the opportunity to briefly deviate from the topic to defend his character’s return in the sequel trilogy.
McDiarmid defends Palpatine’s return: “He always had a plan B!”
“A lot of people thought it was ridiculous. Of course he was dead at the end of Return of the Jedi, and honestly I think George was [Lucas] I was convinced he killed me. But JJ [Abrams] I thought it was a good idea – and I didn’t argue with him. Finally: If there’s anyone who can come back from the grave, it’s Palpatine. I had the impression that he always had a plan B, probably even a plan C, D, E and F. And he was an expert in cloning,” the actor said of his villain’s surprising comeback.
In Star Wars 9, Palpatine’s return coincides with the revelation that Rey (Daisy Ridley) is the evil Emperor’s granddaughter. Immediately after the first screenings, wild speculation broke out among fans about Palpatine’s sex life. However, we now know that Rey’s father and Palpatine’s son Dathan were not conceived in the usual biological manner. Dathan was not created because Palpatine had sex with a woman, but rather is a failed experiment by the Emperor to clone himself. The novel ‘In the Shadow of the Sith’, which will finally be published in German translation during 2024, gave us this answer and filled many of the empty spaces in the sequel trilogy surrounding Rey’s family, but also Luke Skywalker’s failed reconstruction of the Jedi Order.
Nevertheless, discussions about Palpatine’s sex life continue, and actor Ian McDiarmid has now commented on this. The saga’s large following finally gets an explanation they have been waiting for for a long time:
“Please don’t answer the question too forcefully,” he wants fans [und den -Interviewer] a bit by thinking about it too much, but then realizes: “But yeah. He had [Sex]. It’s a horrible thought to imagine Palpatine having sex in any form.
But then he limits it: “But maybe he didn’t have one, of course.”After all, as just explained, Rey’s father was created via cloning – although Palpatine throws something else into the ring: “Maybe this has everything to do with midi-chlorians – and don’t ask me what that is.”
Simply explained: the midi-chlorians are microscopic living organisms that exist in every living thing in the world of “Star Wars”. If you have a lot of them you are Force sensitive, if you have a lot of them you can use the force even better. George Lucas once introduced the term in the prequel trilogy – and it became as derided a meme as “Somehow Palpatine returned”.
Meanwhile, the Midi-Chlorians have also been rehabilitated in the ‘Star Wars’ canon and are once again playing a role, especially in the narrative threads surrounding the attempts to clone Palpatine. They’re mentioned in shows like the aforementioned ‘The Mandalorian’ and ‘The Bad Batch’ – although the exact, much-maligned term is avoided and usually referred to as ‘M-Count’.
This will likely play a role again in the upcoming third season of ‘The Bad Batch’. After all, the Empire has just captured a young clone girl here, who could be the key to completing Palpatine’s ‘Project Necromancer’. We will find out exactly what happens next from February 21, 2024 on Disney+. Then begins the third and final season of what the author of these lines considers to be the best ‘Star Wars’ series yet: “The bad batch“.