Headscratchers / The Rise of Skywalker

Where has Lando been?

• Is there any particular reason why he didn't show up in Episode VII and VIII? Was he not allied with the Resistance for whatever reason? Or was he simply stationed far away from where the conflict was taking place?
  • It's possible that, unlike Han, after Endor, Lando felt it wasn't his fight. So he went back to Cloud City to keep running things there. Now that he's learned of the deaths of two of his friends at the hands of their son and nephew respectively, he's back in the fight because It's Personal. Something similar happened in Legends when Jacen killed Mara.
  • This makes the most sense, especially given how Han never took up with the Resistance either, instead getting a new ship and heading off with Chewie.
  • Unless the canon's been changed by the reboot, Lando's specialty was in business and politics. He could easily have been aiding the Resistance financially, or by arranging some of his properties to be converted into bases, or even by hooking them up with contacts from his shadier days.
  • If that was the case, you'd think the higher ups like Poe would be at least aware of him, and meeting him wouldn't come as a complete surprise it did.
  • It would still be a bit of a surprise if your elderly financial backer, long retired from fieldwork, appeared in the field to help you out on a covert mission.
  • Plus while he would know of Lando, he probably never met him in person.
  • Lando would have had to cover his tracks very, very well so the First Order wouldn't suspect a now-legit businessman was helping the Resistance. Lando may have worked through several intermediaries so the bad guys could never suspect what he was up to. Of course, he is wily and well-connected enough to do just that.
  • Shadow of the Sith specifies that Lando has been living on Pasaana ever since he and Luke failed to track Ochi down. It's a long story, but basically, he realized that the desert environment appealed to him after everything he had gone through during their search, and he decided to stay there, keeping watching over Ochi's ship in case he showed up again and also watching out for clues about the child Ochi was hunting (in other words, Rey) and his own missing daughter, Kadara.
• Speaking of Lando. When back in LJ the entire galaxy forsook the Resistance leaders to die at the hands of a handful of imperials, did that include him? You'd think he'd be the first Leia'd called rather than some no-names. I'm not saying she had to have managed to reach him, or that he had to have been able to help, but it's weird that it's not addressed at all.
  • From an out of universe angle, they may not have wanted to spoil the surprise of him coming back, or they hadn't finished negotiations to get him onboard. In universe, Lando is many things, but reckless isn't among them. He may have laid low, said nothing, and quietly begun gathering others by pulling in favors, seeking out others brave enough to fight, finding old hands from the Alliance (such as Hera Syndulla and Dash Rendar, along with General Antilles), and only started making his move once he saw he had a chance.
  • The Last Jedi takes place over a short timespan. It is almost real time. In the long afternoon of conflict, Lando might have simply busy doing something else where he was out of contact. Depending on where he was in the Galaxy, Lando might have been asleep, he went to bed at night before the evacuation and woke in the morning to find it was all over and everyone had ran away and it was too late to help.

Why Sith troopers serve the First Order if Kylo wanted to let the past die?

• Since the announcement of the Sith troopers as a new stormtrooper variant of the First Order, why Kylo Ren would authorize their formation and name if he said in The Last Jedi that it was time to let the past die, including the Sith and the Jedi. He is the Supreme Leader, so he should check how the stormtroopers battalions are composed and named, right?
  • Perhaps Kylo changed his mind? Star Wars Resistance suggests this to be a possibility, given that the episode "The Relic Raiders" states that the Supreme Leader himself tasked some stormtroopers in searching for ancient Sith artifacts.
  • Considering the implication that Palpatine manipulated Kylo by impersonating Darth Vader through Vader's helmet, maybe Palpatine talked with Kylo about his decision to let the past die and encouraged him to name these troopers after the order he belonged? Perhaps once Palpatine gets back to action, he wants to reclaim the Sith troopers as his own forces...
  • According to the Visual Dictionary, Sith Troopers serve the Final Order not the First Order. They are actually Sith cultists entirely loyal to Palpatine.

Palpatine's return

• The movie opens with Kylo Ren going to a planet with Palpatine right there, just like that. Honestly, the idea of Palpatine existing as some kind of Force Ghost and influencing Kylo Ren through Darth Vader and Snoke makes more sense. Perhaps this is still the case, and Palpatine only made a body for himself now. Does the movie properly explain how Palpatine comes back from the dead, or not?
  • Nope, just one throwaway line about "unnatural" Sith powers.
  • We can only assume that what Palpatine said about Darth Plagueis the Wise in Revenge of the Sith ("so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life") wasn't just bullshit to lure Anakin in the end, and he might have learned a great deal from Plagueis way before creating the Empire. The Star Wars equivalent of Horcruxes with ways of saving his soul somewhere and putting it back in cloned bodies/magically created bodies afterwards, maybe? Pretty sure there were at least two or three stories like that in the old EU.
  • His body is badly damaged and he's on some kind of life support, and he's attended by some weird beings who aren't really identified. We can probably assume they're some kind of servants who retrieved him from the Death Star wreckage and kept him alive.
  • You can see discarded bodies that bear his face in the scene of his introduction. He's a degraded clone possessed by the spirit of the original Emperor. He even confirms that he died before.
  • Just as a reply to this point: those bodies are clones of Snoke, not Palpatine.
  • OP here. Now that the movie is out, this seems to be a little clearer. Given that Palpatine created Snoke through cloning, it could be that he recreated his old body and, using those "unnatural" Force powers, transferred his soul back into his body.
  • It could be Palpatine was on Exegol the entire time, possessing clones that he'd send out to do his bidding in the universe. Return of the Jedi Emperor was a clone, Snoke was a clone, they're all just remotely operated clones. He looks so degraded because the dark side is slowly eating away at him after decades or longer channelling all those dark side energies on the planet.
  • They Never Found the Body, we've seen that a force user can survive a fall into a huge chasm, an explosion and the exposure to vacuum of space, and Palpatine was certainly stronger than either Luke or Leia by several orders of magnitude. So here you go - he steered into some side shaft, realised the station is about to blow and put himself in some Force Shell, and then Force Skyped his buddies to come pick him up.
  • He said that he died before, so no, he did not "survive." And Anakin was supposed to "destroy" the Sith, not throw them away until they come back again. His return was definitely a resurrection, not a survival.
  • He could've been speaking metaphorically, you know, as people sometimes do, like: "I went through hell". And prophecies are bullshit, the entire Jedi Order being wiped out after putting their fate in one should've proven that beyond a shade of doubt. Anakin wasn't "supposed" to do anything.
    • The prequels explained this apparent paradox pretty explicitly; the prophecy was mis-read, not wrong.

Kylo's return to Exegol

• So after defeating Kylo on the remnants of the second Death Star, Rey flies away in his TIE Silencer, leaving him behind. Yet he later joins her on Exegol, arriving in TIE Fighter most likely recovered from debris. But TIE Fighters do not have hyperdrives, so how could he make that trip in time?
  • First Order TIE fighters have hyperdrives, as shown in an earlier chase when they go after the Millennium Falcon.
  • But Kylo's TIE was in same color scheme used by Empire — which points to him finding it in the second Death Star's wreckage.
  • The TIE advanced line (used by the likes of Vader, Inquisitors, etc.) had hyper drives equipped even over a decade before Return of the Jedi. They would have been on space stations like the Death Stars along with standard grunt models.
  • The ship Kylo uses has hexagonal solar collector panels, typical for standard TIE fighters. No ships in advanced line have collectors in this shape.
  • From a quick glance, it looks like it has features seen on the First Order variant (antennae and an underside pod), so it may have been an early variation of that.
  • It might be possible that this TIE is not from Death Star but rather from cruiser that Jarrah and her tribe used to desert from First Order. We don't know when First Order adopted its black and white color scheme for its starfighters.
  • Forget the hyperdrive, how did he find the way? What, did he memorize that incredibly complex course through the insanely dangerous space cave? If that was possible, then why would Palpatine even have a spare wayfinder in the Death Star?
  • He didn't have to remember it - Rey was dropping navigational beacons for Resistance and Free Worlds Fleet. He simply followed directions.
  • Maybe the Second Death Star had a limit number of new TIE Fighters which were hyper-capable but not yet in mass production.

Snoke trying to make Kylo kill Rey

• In The Last Jedi, Snoke tries to make Kylo end Rey's life. But if Palpatine wants her, his granddaughter, to be the new Sith lord, then why have Snoke have Kylo kill her?
  • He probably didn't know she was his granddaughter until after that.
  • Possibly a test, to see what they would do. Kylo turning on Snoke shows he is well on the way to Sithdom, while Rey not giving in to her anger and fear means they have more work to do in order to turn her.
  • The idea was that Palpatine considered either of his descendants suitable to be a new vessel for his soul, having two options meant one of them was expendable, and having either of them kill the other would put the survivor on a direct path to the dark side. Back in The Force Awakens, the novelization mentions that as Rey stood over Kylo Ren after beating him in battle, she heard a voice telling her to kill him, so that scene in The Last Jedi would hardly be the first time he'd pitted one against the other. If (as it turned out) neither killed the other and both survived to be brought to him, he would consider it a bonus to have two highly Force-sensitive descendants to exploit.
  • Entire thing was a poorly explained Xanatos Gambit: Kylo kills Rey: Jedi are all dead, Sith win. Kylo kills him: Possess Kylo, kill Rey, Jedi are all dead, Sith win. Rey kills him: Revenge opens Rey up to dark side, possess Rey, Jedi are all dead, Sith win. Since Rey showed up, fine, he coerces her through carrots and then sticks to go with the "Rey kills him" option. He just wants the light side users all corrupted or dead.
  • Could be a case of learning from experience. He tried to make Anakin kill Luke, only to get a bunch of excuses on how Luke could be turned/trained, culminating in the father and son facing off against him. So he's learned that, if there is some sort of social bond involved, trying to get one of them to kill the other won't work out the way he hoped. Now, what he needs to fully regenerate is both halves of a Force Dyad; he creates the bond and then keeps trying to tell one to kill the other, in order to create a similar situation and wind up with both of them on his doorstep looking to destroy him together. And it worked.
  • Nope, he didn't expect the Dyad. His plan, if he even had one was to lure Rey and possess her. It makes no sense why he wouldn't order Snoke to keep her alive, and if he could possess Kylo why he wouldn't let the boy kill him.
  • The Sith are all about survival of the strongest. If Snoke killed Rey then obviously she was not strong enough, and therefore not the right choice for Sidious' successor. Kylo Ren would have been instead.
  • It's also never made clear if Snoke is his own entity, Palpatine's flesh puppet or something in between. It could well have been a moment that deviated from Palpatine's plan as Snoke asserted his own will.
  • In this movie Palpatine tells Kylo to kill Rey as well. So it's no surprise that Snoke was given the same orders. Survival of the fittest - whoever emerges from all your minions fighting each other will be the strongest, and the best choice to succeed you.
  • And if they kill each other, then you're screwed and stuck as a rotting corpse. Also, Snoke effortlessly overpowered and very nearly killed Rey only for Kylo to defeat him. So by this logic he should be the better choice.

Jedi Helping

• If all the past Jedi can give Rey a boost against Palpatine, why didn't they do that earlier? Why didn't they help Ben or Luke or Leia when they were being manipulated?
  • Palpatine said he was the voices in Kylo Ren's head, so he may have blocked them from helping him. That explanation doesn't work for the others, though, unless we assume he's just that much more powerful than the ghosts and can cancel them more or less at will... in which case, why could they appear to help Rey?
  • Additionally why did none of those force ghosts ever try to warn ANYONE that Palpatine was alive and building a new fleet of planet destroyers? How are force ghosts even able to power up Rey? Especially since the planet they are on must be filled with the dark side, how can Jedi ghosts even manifest in such a place?
  • The Jedi were only able to speak to Rey once she took the final steps and became a true Jedi—she tried listening to them at the beginning of the movie and failed. She was their connection. They couldn't speak to anyone else because there were no other true Jedi listening. And even then, they did little more than speak and encourage her. It's not like there was an army of Force Ghosts fighting beside her.
  • That still doesn't explain why they didn't try to say anything to Luke, who is a true Jedi and doubtless could really have used some advice when rebuilding the Jedi Order or struggling to guide his nephew. Through him, they could have conveyed advice to Leia or Ben—Ben might not have believed him, but Leia certainly would.
  • You still have to be listening. Luke probably got some advice regarding rebuilding the Order, and that all went fine. But when he went to check on Ben while he was sleeping, he was alone, because why would he need to call on a thousand generations of Jedi to check on one apprentice? Then everything went to hell, it looked like it was too late to fix anything, and Luke wasn't interested in listening to advice such as "don't hide on the most out of the way planet in the galaxy and mope."
  • Luke was worried about Ben before he checked on him that fateful night. Plenty of time to ask for advice. And why wouldn't he want to call on a thousand generations? This is his beloved nephew, who his entire family has been worrying about. Even if Luke wouldn't want to do everything he could to help Ben, just one person giving advice would have helped.
  • And honestly, the whole notion that there's a requirement to receive guidance is dumb. Maybe one would have to be "a true Jedi" to pull the power-up thing, but just getting advice? During the OT, Obi-Wan gave Luke advice even before he'd finished training. Leia was terrified for her son. Ben was pleading with his grandfather for help. If Anakin didn't answer his own flesh and blood just because they "weren't true Jedi", even just to reassure them or try to steer Ben away from the dark...then he and the "thousand generations" are really dicks.
  • It's not because they won't, it's because they can't. You have to be a true Jedi to be able to connect to all the past Jedi. Force Ghosts are an entirely different thing, though they have similarities.
  • How is Rey more of a true Jedi than Luke or Leia? Leia trained Rey so why didn't the ghosts talk to Leia? What the hell is a true Jedi anyway? Rey had one year of training, she didn't even build her lightsaber at that point, which is a requirement. And this still doesn't answer how the hell the voices could manifest in a planet filled with Dark side energy.
    • Luke was trained to use the parts of the Force that Obi-Wan and Yoda both remembered from their own training and taught him to use, and the parts he saw Vader using. Leia would have been trained to do the things Luke learned to do. Rey, on the other hand, had the Jedi books, which Luke did not read even when he found them, which was years after he was doing all his tricks... after all, page-turners they were not.
  • Who said she was "more" Jedi than them? Leia was the one who taught her how to do it, implying she could do it herself. But Leia never faced an immortal Sith sorcerer and needed to fight him in a direct Sith-vs-Jedi Force battle, so we never needed to see her do it. As for why the Jedi could speak to Rey on a Dark-side planet, why wouldn't they be able to? They weren't fully-manifested Force Ghosts, they were just voices connecting to Rey specifically.
  • As a possibility, maybe they couldn't reach out to others. Exegol is a MASSIVE wellspring of the Force, so perhaps their spirits simply didn't have enough power to reach anyone that wasn't sitting directly on a hotspot of power. Plus, perhaps they could finally reach Rey because she was straddling the border between life and death, so it was easier for them.

Why doesn't Ren just kill Palpatine?

• He made it clear it was his plan from the start. He's just indicated that he's sick of taking orders (and he's just learned that Snoke basically was Palpatine, so he should be especially done with that guy's orders). Then Palpatine gives him a fleet of planet killers, and suddenly Ren's happy being The Dragon again? Why not just kill him and take the planet killers?
  • Because Ren still wants Rey to rule beside him. He wants them both to strike down Palpatine. Besides, Palpatine implies that he's the one in ultimate control of the fleet (presumably all the Sith cultists are crewing them) when he casually threatens to turn them on Ren. Just up and stabbing Palpatine was risky.
  • Kylo couldn't take Snoke on his own. Palpatine is the power behind Snoke. He has no reason to believe he can kill Palpatine alone. But with Rey? Suddenly seems a lot more possible with two powerful force users.
  • But he was going to do it - he specifically went to Exegol to find and kill Palpatine. Did seeing Palpatine as a decrepit wretch on life support suddenly scared him? As for the fleet, Palpatine only threatened to do it after Ren foolishly let him live and left. Besides, it's the Sith, betrayal and backstabbing is their coin of the land. Why wouldn't they serve Kylo instead?
  • What has Kylo lost by waiting? He gains the invincible fleet and an opportunity to have Rey accompany him in striking down Palpatine and ruling the galaxy together. It's a win-win for him to wait to take out Palpatine.
  • First of all, he doesn't get the fleet - only the promise of it. A promise from Palpatine, which is obviously bullshit. Second, if he believes the fleet would serve him after he kills Palpatine, then it would do so whenever, so, again, nothing to gain by waiting. Third, he has no guarantee whatsoever that he'd be able to recruit Rey, whereas once Palpatine realises he's trying to do so, he might just unleash the fleet on the galaxy and on Ren. Finally, even if he succeeds and they come back with Rey, what makes him think he'll get another chance and won't have, like, an entire army waiting for him instead of a half a dozen incompetent guards?
  • Kylo was waiting for a time to kill Palpatine without those loyal to Palpatine realizing it and thus refusing to follow him. That's the reason Kylo waited to kill Snoke until presented with a golden opportunity. And given Palpatine's power, their having cheated death before, and his knowing of Kylo's betrayal of Snoke, Kylo knew he'd need a lot of preparations and to wait for an ideal moment to have a chance of pulling it off.
  • Except that he killed Snoke in full view of his guards, apparently unconcerned that one of them might run for back up or just tell on him via intercom. Also, Palpatine was surrounded by thousands of his followers, how was Rey going to help with that? Also, they're Sith! Why would Kylo expect them to give a damn about loyalty anyway? Also, he rushed to kill Palpatine immediately after hearing the message. No preparations, no concern about subtlety or denial, and apparently no plan beyond "shank the old creep and every fool who might have a problem with that".
    • The Sith Eternal is a cult that worships the Sith, not the Sith themselves (Given There's still the Rule of 2 at the time). Just because they are backstabbers doesn't mean their fanatic non-force sensitive followers are.
  • Kylo wasn't concerned about Snoke's guards, he was concerned about Snoke. As demonstrated immediately after he kills Snoke, he can take the guards on in a fight. He can't take Snoke in a fight, though, and likewise clearly can't take Palpatine as evidenced by, well, him completely failing to take Palpatine in this movie. When he first goes to Exegol, he doesn't know that it's really Palpatine. All he knows is there's some guy claiming to be Palpatine, so he's going to investigate and snuff him out so he's not a threat to Kylo Ren's powerbase in the First Order. Except he finds out it really is Palpatine, who he can't just whack down with a lightsaber. So his plans change.
  • "wasn't concerned about Snoke's guards" - It was a response to the "killing Palpatine without those loyal to him realizing it" argument above. Regardless, the logic of "Kylo couldn't take on Snoke, ergo he cannot take on Palpatine" is really shaky. Again, a scientist/engineer can make a tank or a nuclear bomb. Doesn't make them any more personally intimidating^note no offence to scientists or engineers anywhere, you guys rock. Au contraire, the very fact that Palpatine had bothered to create an entire extra being, rather than take over himself, should've assured Kylo that the old bastard is currently off his game (if his sorry state didn't clue him in). That "evidence" you mention is not valid, because Palpatine only became a personal threat after draining Rey and Kylo, which he apparently couldn't have done with him alone, or else he'd have simply done it. As for not knowing if it was really Palpatine broadcasting from the secret Sith planet accessibly only via a Sith artifact guarded by Sith cultists... as little sense it makes for Palpatine himself to announce his return in this fashion, what possible reason could anyone else have had to do that and paint a huge target on themselves? And even setting all that aside, Rey only turned out to be an asset against Snoke, because he happened to want her alive, whereas Palpatine specifically ordered Kylo to kill her. If, by your own logic, Kylo thinks Palpatine is stronger than Snoke (who'd effortlessly swatted Rey aside), then what help could she possibly be? Another distraction?
  • Palpatine seemed pretty confident in his ability to take out Ben and Rey before he realized they were a dyad; and Kylo has no idea how powerful Palpatine is. He knows that he was the Emperor, the most powerful Sith in memory. He knows this is a man that Darth Vader answered to, in a religion where Asskicking Leads to Leadership (or at least, "being able to kill the guy above you equals authority"); so if he was above Snoke, it stands to reason that he was more powerful than Snoke. And he apparently came back from blowing up with the Death Star. It doesn't matter so much whether Palpatine could easily take out Kylo, because the assumption Kylo is going to make based on reputation is that Palpatine is beyond him. As for bringing Rey? Remember that in Empire, Palpatine wanted Luke dead, too, until Vader convinced him that he could be made an ally. If Kylo can turn Rey, there's no reason the same wouldn't apply. As for why someone would broadcast from there? He's got a fleet of super killer Star Destroyers. Even if he wasn't Palpatine, that alone would have made him a force to be reckoned with.
  • The undeniable fact is that upon seeing that it was indeed Palpatine, Kylo ignited his saber and put to Emperor's throat. Tht's it. He clearly wasn't intimidated, and Palpatine did nothing to cowtow him. He didn't even show him raising the ships (though even he did, Kylo could assume they're doing it on their own). On the contrary, his confession about being "all the voices" should've pissed Kylo beyond belief. It was already ridiculous how Anakin ignored the revelation about being manipulated, but with Kylo there's just no excuse whatsoever. "Palpatine wanted Luke dead," - nope, all he said was "[Luke] mustn't become a Jedi". Vader suggested turning him, and Palpatine instantly agreed. Nothing like a direct kill order Kylo received. And again, Snoke had curbstomped Rey. By common sense and by your very logic that should invalidate her against Palpatine.
  • Ren is impulsive, but not a fool. Surely he realised the oddity of being permitted to just waltz to Palpatine's inner sanctum unnoposed without anyone doing anything to impede him; he also knows Palpatine already managed to cheat death somehow but does not know the specifics. So he realises that the Emperor has an ace up his sleeve and he is at the disadvantage. When Palpatine mentions Rey, Kylo is inspired to turn her to his side to better his chances and thus pretends to accept the deal with her grandad.
    • Cost-benefit analysis still says "kill Palpatine now" because he might not have gotten the chance to later. Being able to walk right up to Palpatine could have been a sign that Palpatine had an ace up his sleeve, but it was more likely a sign of good faith and overconfidence from a man who believes he can easily control anyone close to the dark side. If Palpatine stays dead; great. If not, then he'll likely come back even weaker than he currently is (if he was strong and this current body is a ruse, he wouldn't have hidden so long or need Ren's help) and since the Exegol labs are clearly the basis of both his army and ressurective powers, dismantling and razing them them would almost certainly keep him dead. The ability to recruit Rey was a long shot, and an alliance with someone less powerful being able to provide a better opportunity to kill Palpatine than is currently in front of Ren was a longer one.
    • As Star Wars' history shows, when a Skywalker thinks that Palpatine is being weak and helpless, the latter swiftly proves himself to be anything but. Now, Ren may or may not know about the "UNLIMITED POWER" event, but Luke would have definetely mention that one time Palpatine invited him to his throne room for a chat, which ended with Luke getting nearly fried by an unexpected case of sudden Force lightning; Palpatine's very survival means that he has some unnatural powers Ren is presently unaware of. Also, it was only because of Rey that Ren got his chance to get rid of previously untouchable Snoke; he is predisposed to think that having Rey at his side would massively increase his chances of success against the Emperor.
    • Point, but both of those instances were gambits to pull a lightsider to the dark side, which obviously doesn't apply to Ren (would a Sith like Palpatine even want an apprentice who won't try to strike him down when he's seemingly helpless?). And yes, Palpatine's survival proves he has a power; to resurrect himself in weaker bodies, and clearly through the labs on Exegol, so Ren probably has the upper hand now, but Rey remains a long-shot (especially since killing Snoke should have probably emboldened Kylo; he didn't need Rey specifically for the actual killing, just a good diversion. Rey helped with the guards a afterwards, but after that, the FO was Ren's.)
    • Eh, Ren was never entirely at ease with the Dark Side; neither was he Palpatine's apprentice: however, what Palpatine wanted with his gambits is to bait Skywalkers into making the wrong decisions that he could benefit from. More importantly, Ren has no real reason to believe that he would actually be able to stab Palpatine with the lightsaber. Between (very sickly looking) Snoke once subduing him the moment he wanted to attack, his own ability to freeze things in place and his broad understanding of Palpatine's mastery of the Force the probability of him losing to the Emperor is uncomfortably high. Also, he may have been emotionally compromised by the unsetting revelation Palpatine dropped on him some minutes prior. As for Rey, Ren's actions suggest that he sincerely believes that converting her is something he could do, not without some good reasons: Dark Side leaning genetics, Force dyad, traumatic background and the knowledge that she was previously tempted to join him. With her for a back-up, Ren's chances to beat Palpatine are much better; besides, Rey's very presence could be a vital distraction Ren would have needed to win, just as it previously worked with Snoke.

[[folder: Where's Pryde been this whole time?]]

• Wiping out the Resistance seems like it should be their first priority, and Pryde seems competent enough a commander that they'd want him focused on that.
  • Snoke deliberately kept Hux as his main guy. Pryde was probably off conquering parts of the galaxy during Last Jedi. When Kylo Ren took over he demoted Hux by promoting Pryde to his number one spot.
  • Pryde has been in hiding alongside his true leader, Palpatine. Once Ren and Palpatine strike their bargain Pryde is basically Palpatine's representative amongst the commanders.

That's No Colony Drop

• How does the Death Star touch down on a planet and still maintain perfect dome shape instead of collapsing under its own weight?
  • That wasn't the entire Death Star, just a large piece.
  • It's still ridiculously intact. Hell, doors are still operational. How is that possible?
  • The Force did it. If anyone but Rey had gone in they would have had to crank the doors open manually. Rey finding the Sith Wayfinder is part of Sidious' plan, so the doors open for her.
  • There are rather more pressing matters of physics than maintaining large-scale shape. See the headscratcher immediately below, because no pieces of the Death Star II were depicted in this movie as they were in Jedi.
  • Possibly that chunk of Death Star still had its artificial gravity operating as it was flung free of the collapsing station, and that negated the effects of both the Colony Drop and its own mass post-crash, at least on the fraction of it we saw.

No Death Star could have survived that

• Compare the broadly intact Death Star wreckage on the ocean planet, with the way it was obliterated to the point of atoms in Jedi (ok, with a few large chunks according to the Star Wars Technical Commentaries), and it goes way past a retcon attempt to an unjustified Ass Pull. How is this circle meant to square? They should have found a different way to evoke the old Death Star II environment, like maybe it was a failed prototype which also had a throne room built in for Palpatine should he ever need to use it as an HQ.
  • In fact, wasn't it specifically said that the DS imploded and was sucked into a self-created wormhole or whatnot, to justify how there was No Endor Holocaust?
  • Not in any of the films. Honestly, what's happening here is just a simple visuals retcon. In the original movie, it exploded all in one go because at the end of the day, that's the kind of effect they could reasonably do with the technology at the time.
  • Oh, so Endor Holocaust should've happened then? If some remote planet had a shard of that size landing on it, Endor should've had like a half the station smash into it.
  • Yes. The DS II was stationed at a low enough geosynchronous orbit around the Forest Moon to be MASSIVE in the sky, even during daytime. An explosion that blows it to chunks from the inside-out would have flung half its mass directly into the forest (and into the retreating Alliance ships' backs). There used to be Legends literature claiming that the Rebel Alliance shot down these fragments, but we don't know if that's still valid, and it makes no sense that a chunk of dish (which was facing the Forest Moon at the time of explosion) as well as the Emperor's North Pole tower would get flung into another Endor moon.
  • Given that the second Death Star was the place where the Emperor died, perhaps the Dark Side was strong enough that it changed the trajectory of the debris to create a creepy graveyard on an adjacent moon.
  • The first time that showed the idea of the Death Star II not getting obliterated with the new canon was in Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) which showed Death Star II wreckage orbiting the planet.

Was that Han's Medal?

• Because Chewbacca has his own, as confirmed by Expanded Universe material. Not that him having Han's medal isn't nice.
  • It's funnier to think that Maz robbed Han's apartment or whatever after he died.
  • Well, she has Luke's old lightsaber, so maybe she just runs a storage facility for the heroes on the side.
  • It's difficult to make out, but it looks like Leia is holding Han's medal as she dies, perhaps as a final memento of her husband as she connects to her son. Which would mean Maz took it off her corpse and gave it to Chewie.
  • There was no corpse to rob, Leia disappeared just like Luke and Ben. She'd been holding it until that moment. Someone had to inherit the medal after she passed. His wife and son are both gone. Who better to get Han Solo's old medal than his best friend and longstanding co-pilot, Chewbacca?
  • There was a corpse to rob, for quite a while; they put a sheet over her and everything. Leia's body only faded when Ben died. The charitable assumption is that Maz found the medal lying on top of the empty clothing and thought it'd be nice for Chewie to have it.
  • Although the filmmakers clearly intended it to be Han's medal, the fact that Maz Kanata gave it to him adds another funnier possibility. Force Collector reveals that Han sold her a counterfeit version of his medal. Even though we saw Leia holding the real one in the same base, there's nothing to indicate she gave him the real one.

Force Healing

• So if Jedi can just straight up heal other people - and even bring them back from death - why didn't Anakin just do that with Padmé?
  • Force healing has been a thing since the beginning, though it was only explicitly called such in the EU. Padmé's situation was significantly different in that there was never a clear, concrete threat to her life. Anakin was scared of a vague vision, not a specific enemy he could defeat or wound he could heal. Palpatine played to his paranoia, promising him that the only thing that could save her from anything would be Sith magic. And when Padmé actually died, not only was Anakin no longer in a position to do anything about it, but he was the one who attacked her.
  • There's also the fact that, while Anakin talked to Yoda about his visions, he didn't give the whole truth because Jedi were forbidden from having families. Had he been completely honest, Padmé would've had the best care the Jedi could offer, but his career as a Jedi would've been over. Anakin would make any sacrifice except a self-sacrifice.
  • Plus, based on what we saw, if he had saved her from dying, it would have likely killed HIM. So, ultimately, not a particularly more desirable outcome.
  • Not sure if this was explicitly mentioned in the movie or merely hinted at in the novelization, but supposedly the reason why Anakin was so frustrated at not being given the rank of Master was because he wanted to get into the locked portion of the Jedi archives and search for a cure for whatever situation might cause Padmé's death. With no ability to find a Jedi solution, he took the chance of finding a solution among the Sith. Rey has the original Jedi books; there is, at this point, no technique that she isn't allowed to learn.
  • Also, something to note is that Force Healing may be something that's not particularly common or easily done. For one, it seems to run on equivalent exchange (how much you heal someone is directly in proportion to how much you drain yourself), so it would require either an immense amount of power (something only a few Jedi of the age would have), or having someone nearby to ensure you don't die in the process. It may have been something of a "forbidden" art, simply due to how risky it was.
  • Not... really? Way back in The New Hope, after the Tusken Raiders knocked Luke out, Obi-Wan laid hands on him - it could be that he healed him. And yes, he looked a bit exhausted afterwards, but nothing life-draining.
  • Obi-Wan was given the rank of Master, and so had access to the "forbidden" section of the old Archives. And his fatigue could indicate that even healing a relatively minor injury (at worst a mild concussion and nasty bruise) was still fairly draining.
  • The force healing was only used by Rey on the worm monster and Kylo then by Kylo on Rey. It's possible that force healing can't normally heal lethal wounds and only could fully revive Rey/Kylo because of the force dyad.
  • Maybe that's the exact reason Anakin freaked out as much as he did. Despite the knowledge of Force Healing he was still having the nightmares of Padmé dying! How could it be possible? Will he not be strong enough? Not be there in time? Regardless, as far as Anakin was aware, the very fact that he was still having these visions (which he consider premonitions) meant that the Force Healing would not help him. Hence why he buys into Palpatine's "not from a jedi" remark so readily - it concurs perfectly with his own beliefs.
    • He'd have to be an even bigger moron than he already proved himself to think that whatever Palpatine could supposedly teach him could save Padme if she died when he wasn't with her (which was what his visions seemed to show) or if she was rendered instantly dead, because Palpatine doesn't even promise anything like that; in the canon Darth Vader comics, immediately after Revenge of the Sith ends, he accuses Palpatine of lying to him, and Palpatine simply says that there's nothing even the dark side can do now that's she's already dead, and Vader seems to accept this.
  • You're all taking this too literally. Anakin didn't just want one extra Force power to heal Padme, he wanted to prevent her from dying, period. That's what Palpatine promised him, the power to "cheat death," the ability to "keep the ones he cared about from dying." Any regular Force power has its limits in rage, duration, exertion, whatever. . . Anakin wanted something that would ensure that no matter what, Padme would not die. He need something that was. . . unnatural. Yes, in the most literal terms, if Anakin knew Force Heal, and was with Padme on Polis Massa when she was giving birth, he could have maybe kept her alive, but if he could have been there, the circumstances that led to her death wouldn't have happened in the first place.
    • Perhaps that was ROTS' intention, but that simply isn't conveyed by the film; the only deaths Anakin's shown having issues with are his mother's and the one he envisions for Padme; violent, and well before their time. He explicitly states "i will not let these visions come to pass." I'd argue that that film more alludes to stories of Immortality Immorality than actually uses that trope itself. The novelization made the deliberate choice to cut out the middleman, but isn't canon.

Anakin was the Chosen One or Rey?

• Word of God has stated that Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One destined to destroy the Sith (albeit not the dark side of the Force as whole) by killing Darth Sidious and then dying himself, but here Darth Sidious mysteriously revived himself and the Sith nearly managed to return until Rey destroys Sidious once and for all. So...this means that then Anakin's sacrifice was All for Nothing and that Rey was always the Chosen One?
  • Well, Anakin aided Rey into destroying Sidious alongside other Jedi by sending her some of his power, so maybe Anakin did succeed in destroying the Sith by supplying Rey with all his powers to destroy the last Sith Lord.
  • Without an explanation how Palpatine came back, it's hard to say. That said, given how unstable Kylo Ren was, and how brief Palpatine's return was, it might be best to say that Anakin brought balance, while Rey maintained that balance.
  • During the sequence when past Jedi are speaking to Rey, you hear Anakin say "restore balance to the Force, as I once did." So Anakin did bring balance to the Force, the arrival of Snoke and the corruption of Ben threw the Force back out of balance, and Rey (with Anakin's help) restored balance to the Force.
  • Except that Snoke was a puppet of Palpatine, who survived the events of Return of the Jedi. Since Palpatine survived and Snoke was his extension, that translates to Palpatine disrupting the balance— and since Palpatine was known for messing with the force such as influencing midichlorians to create Anakin, this means that Anakin failed at his prophecy. Not only that, Palpatine corrupted another person into the Sith, got said Sith to destroy the Second Jedi Order, and built the largest fleet in the galaxy and armed them with planet destroying weapons. The fact that Snoke/Palpatine's First Order was such a threat refutes the theory that Anakin restored balance. Besides, Anakin had ego problems, so he is not an infallible narrator here. Sure, one may assume that Anakin helping Rey at the end counts but that means that the likes of Adi Gallia, Aayla Secura, and Mace Windu are on par with the "chosen one"— hence the chosen many. That makes no sense. My guess is he refers to having "restored balance" in Mortis during the Clone Wars by calming the Son and Daughter, but he definitely did not do so in Return of the Jedi. Rise of Skywalker retconned Rey into the chosen one and made Anakin's story a "Shaggy Dog" Story.
  • A possibility is that Anakin DID bring balance to the Force. However, like any balance, it needed to be maintained. After Anakin balanced the scales in Rot J, first Luke offset it (raising a new Jedi Order), which opened the door for Palpatine to really throw things back off balance through Ben and the First Order. Rey isn't necessarily the "Chosen One", at least of THAT prophecy. She is, perhaps, chosen to end the old ways, and ultimately bring something new.
  • There's always the Babylon 5 approach of there being more than one Chosen One with each Chosen One having a different part to play. In any case, even if Anakin didn't restore balance to the Force, or if he did restore balance and it later got out of whack again due to Palpatine's plottings, Anakin did redeem himself and save his son Luke, who later trained Rey. All this assume there was anything to the original prophecy to begin with, given that the Jedi of the Prequel Trilogy were ironically quite blind to what was going on around them despite their powers of prophecy.
  • In a very technical sense, Anakin fulfilled the prophecy: he killed Palpatine, bringing balance. Palpatine even says at the start of this one that he "died"; it just didn't stick. So in-universe, it just scrapes in as a win, but isn't all that satisfying to the viewers.
  • Anakin's bringing "balance" seemed more about balancing the dark and light in himself than simply killing all the Force users in the galaxy. He was a member of both the Jedi and the Sith, and he revealed the flaws of both organizations. Those flaws led to their destruction and rebirth.
    • Building on that, Rey is one of the many endpoints of his bringing balance. Her, Cal, Ezra, and Ahsoka are the result of balancing the Force. Not by balancing the scale of light and dark, but by allowing a new path that accepts both equally. Force users who recognize that things like fear and anger, along with bonds and love exist within all living things, and that the Force isn't about banishing one side or the other, but learning to accept and balance oneself
  • Back in The Last Jedi, Luke states that Anakin's actions before his death did bring balance to the Force, albeit temporarily.
  • It's shown in the Sequel Trilogy Force powers that were previously lost (e.g. Force dyad) or amplified in potency (e.g. Force healing), which is likely because of Anakin fulfilling the prophecy and bringing balance to the Force. So Anakin was the Chosen One; it just took three decades between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens for the surge in Force powers and abilities to become apparent (hence the name "The Force Awakens").
  • The prophecy doesn’t say anything about the Jedi or the Sith, only that the Chosen One would bring balance to the Force. Anakin did that on Mortis when he killed the Son after the death of the Daughter. Everything else is irrelevant, and any attempt to interpret anything else in terms of the prophecy is misinterpretation.

First Order Strategy

• So, you have a massive fleet of ships that are ready to launch, extremely powerful, but are currently in a location where their shields cannot be raised to protect the weakness that, if attacked, will likely destroy the entire ship. And they cannot leave that position without very precise navigational information that can be transmitted from all of two locations. Why keep those ships stationed there, in their most vulnerable position possible, instead of moving at least some of them out to a forward operating position?
  • The ships were crewed by Palpatine's cultists, and Palpatine doesn't care about their lives. And when he started finding the enemy annoying, he dropped a Force Storm and nearly annihilated the entire fleet by himself. Actually, that right there is probably a good tactical reason for keeping them close—they were staying within range of their biggest defense, the Emperor himself. He just didn't care enough to actually help until he regenerated.
  • Except the only reason they needed that defence was because they were in that particular place. We know that they can leave Exegol. So what was stopping Palpatine from quietly sending them out in the galaxy, positioning them at all the important planets, destroying a few as a demonstration and then announcing his return and making his ultimatum?
  • Palpatine is, even still, a tremendously overconfident individual. He wants the galaxy to know that he's going to win (because he's already convinced he has).
  • Ok, so wouldn't that message be better brought across by sending the ships out and demonstrating their might?
  • Palpatine seems to have had an interesting and mildly complex plan going on here. He needed a Force Dyad to regenerate. So he created one. Then, he needed to manipulate both of them into coming to him. The last time that happened, it was because two people with a father-son bond (probably not the same thing, but pretty close) had decided to do him in and 'save' each other for their own reasons. He needed Ben Solo to be Anakin and want to 'rule the galaxy as 'father and son'' and he needed Rey to be Luke and want to destroy the Emperor and redeem his father. Having the fleet and showing it to Kylo Ren was part of the process of putting him in that role; it turned him from "why should I bother with this old guy when I can just ace him right now" into "if I play this right, that huge invincible fleet will be mine." Then, when they both show up to defeat him, Palpatine could just take the power of their bond, suck it into himself, regenerate, and then he's in a much better position to send his ships out into the galaxy and announce his return.
  • Was the dyad thing really his original plan? He seemed surprised, even a bit shocked, that it healed him so well, and only then realised they were a dyad. The original plan was to possess Rey... whom he told Kylo to kill... but whatever. Regardless, you'd think he'd learned his lesson from Endor about putting real bait in his mousetrap - even if he needed the fleet to seduce Kylo, why does it have to be still there rather than already out in the galaxy, destroying or threatening planets into submission? Also, "play this right" is what exactly? How does demonstrating the fleet motivate Kylo into anything other than killing Palpatine? It should be obvious that anything he promises is bullshit, and the only way to take over the fleet is to kill him and assume command through force.
  • How could he not know about the Dyad? Snoke was the one who created (or claimed to create) it, and Kylo Ren/Ben Solo didn't even mention the term to Rey until after Palpatine told him who Rey was. It's mentioned above that Kylo Ren couldn't take Snoke without Rey - he's going to think he needs her to take out Palpatine, too. So Palpatine knows that he needs both of them, and he motivates both of them so that Kylo Ren will be the Lord Vader and Rey will be the Luke, and they will both wind up in front of him the same way as it happened before. And, mind you, it worked.
  • Snoke claimed to have connected the minds of Rey and Kyo, but he didn't create the dyad, just that he connected his minds. He didn't even seem to realize what their connection really was. Palpatine himself didn't realize there was a dyad until he saw it in front of him, so his plan wasn't to regenerate. His offers to Kylo and Rey both include making them the "new Emperor/Empress" so his plan all along was probably to take over their body once they were in touch with the Dark Side enough. With regards to the original topic, the explanation for why the ships were on Exegol for the whole movie is simple. It's stated at the beginning of the film that attacks being in 16 hours. The Sith Fleet isn't being kept there as part of a strategy, they just need to be sortied. Assuming that the fueling, manning, arming, and other preparations begin as soon as they rise form the ice, 16 hours to prepare a whole fleet to dominate the entire galaxy at once is pretty impressive.
  • It's stated but it's never explained why it had to be this way, or what was stopping Palpatine from raising, fueling, manning, arming and deploying the ships and then announcing his return.
  • Again, as was said before, Palpatine is being overconfident, his weakness as Luke said. What's more is that in this film, Palpatine didn't just come back from his first defeat, but also Came Back Wrong, spending most of the film as a living corpse on life support. Him thinking straight at that point is pretty much unlikely.

Emperor Palpatine Tactics

• Palpatine is the most powerful Sith in existence with that a booster shot of power from Force Draining Rey and Kylo. He's blasting Rey with Lightning and Rey's holding it off with her Lightsaber, just like Mace Windu did way back in Episode 3, an act which seemed to hurt Palpatine at least some. Why did he keep pouring on the power when it's clearly not working instead of using Force Drain again? Or grabbing a lightsaber?
  • Without an explanation how Palpatine came back, it's hard to say, but perhaps he Came Back Wrong? Additionally, as Luke put it, Palpatine's weakness is his over confidence. Plus, depending how literally you take his "all the Sith" comment, then that includes the master and apprentices he's betrayed, so they might've sabotaged him from beyond.
  • The entire confrontation took less than a minute. It's hard to change tactics that fast, especially when Palpatine's Force strategy has typically been "if hitting them with a ridiculous amount of power doesn't work, hit them with more power." His trick would have worked great on a Sith, because it would have been power against power. But as a Jedi, Rey reflected his power instead.
  • If you look closely, about halfway through this confrontation (right before he starts disintegrating), you'll notice that Palpatine HAS stopped pouring lightning into Rey's lightsabers, yet for some reason he's still getting fried. Either this is residual electricity from his initial attack, or Rey helping things along with her own powers (arguably a headscratcher on its' own), it's clear that Palpatine DID learn his lesson, just a bit too late to be helpful.
  • He probably already absorbed a fatal "dose" of force lightning by that point. His whole body disintegrating was probably just to look cool.
  • Rey demonstrates in this film that it's easy to use Force Lightning accidentally. Palpatine simply couldn't shut it off in time.
  • Also, it is well established since Return of the Jedi that Palpatine is a big blabber. Every time Vader got Luke just this close to being overrun by his emotions, good ol' Sheev had to comment "good, now you are going to fall to the Dark Side". It's a miracle Vader didn't tell him "mylord, will you please shut up one minute and let me finish my job?"

What was Finn trying to tell Rey?

• They teased this when they were in the quicksand but there was no resolution at the end of the film. Any guesses?
  • Finn thought he might be Force-sensitive, since he was able to break the Stormtrooper mental conditioning, and from talking with Jannah, there are others who were able to do the same.
  • You're right. JJ Abrams confirmed it during a screening at the Academy.
  • It might be that he was about to confess his love for her.
  • Yes, the implication is pretty clear that it would have been a Dying Declaration of Love had he been given the opportunity. It's telling that Finn has been matched with Rose and Jannah and doesn't express interest in either of them.
  • The actor who plays Finn has made it very clear that he ships Finn/Poe. Seems likely Finn didn't express any interest in anything but friendship with Rose, Jannah, and Rey because his interests lie elsewhere.
  • Actually, it's confirmed he was trying to tell her he's Force-Sensitive.
  • This strongly smacks of something that was determined in reshoots and editing. It doesn't make any sense for Finn to make "I'm force sensitive" his dying declaration or for him to be so bashful about the subject. Why would that be the one thing he needs to get off his chest before he dies? It's never established in any other scene that he's been knowingly harboring his force sensitivity as a secret for some unexplained reason. On the other hand, Finn has shown romantic interest in Rey and has spent three movies as her close friend, so it would make a lot of sense for him to be secretly in love with her, want to finally express his feelings as a dying declaration, and be bashful about bringing the subject up later. So it could be that the scene was originally written to be an interrupted Dying Declaration of Love, but the filmmakers decided to give Finn No Romantic Resolution in editing and used the force sensitivity thing as an excuse after the fact.
  • Actually, telling Rey he's Force-sensitive under the circumstances might've been a very appropriate thing. We know Finn has only the vaguest notion of how the Force works, but one thing he might be aware of is that Force-users can sense one another's presence. If they survive the plunge through the sand and wind up in a cave - which, indeed, is exactly what happened - then Rey being able to reach out and pinpoint Finn's location in the dark might just be a life-saver. But Rey's new enough to the Force herself that she might not even think to try, if he doesn't let her know what to look for.
  • That explanation relies on several leaps of logic and still doesn't explain why he's bashful after the fact. So if (1) Finn is aware that he's Force sensitive, and (2) he's aware that Force sensitive people can locate each other, and (3) he has some reason to suspect that there's a hollow cave beneath the quicksand they're sinking into, and (4) he thinks that they'll get separated once they fall into the cave, then it might be good for Rey to know that he's Force sensitive, in case she forgets that she can sense his presence, so she can find and rescue him. That's a lot of steps. And if all of that were actually true, then why wouldn't he tell her after the fact? If he thinks that telling her that he's Force sensitive could help her find him if he ever got into trouble, wouldn't he still want her to know in case the Resistance needs her to find him later? It's still pretty clear that this was the product of a reshoots and editing.
  • Key... Why then? It's not like that information could've saved them from what they thought was a certain death, is it? Professing his love, on the other hand, made perfect sense, seeing how he was smitten with Rey from the day they met.
  • It's not like professing his love could have saved them from certain death either. It's one of those things people do, they tell secrets on their supposed deathbed. So confessing his love isn't really more likely than confessing his Force Sensitivity, if that's why he did it. Remember that he's already done a last-minute may-not-get-another-chance confession to her, and it was that he used to be a First Order Stormtrooper. On the other hand... if there's a way out that requires two Force Sensitives, now's a really good time to know about it.
  • Still seems weird that it's not brought out earlier. You'd think that either Rey or Leia would sense that Finn is Force-sensitive, or he'd have mentioned it in the time between films, especially since Leia is training Rey. Having one Jedi is a boost to the resistance, two would be invaluable.
  • Also, if it was something as neutral as being force-sensitive, why beat around the bush? After they get to the cave, Rey asks him what he wanted to tell her, and he says it's nothing or he'll tell her later, or something like that. It makes absolutely no sense why he would keep his force-sensitivity a secret any longer at that point, since, indeed it might come very useful later. Being in love with her, however - that is indeed something he might have problems with telling her out of mortal danger.
  • "telling he's Force-sensitive might've been appropriate". It might, but the way it was framed and phrased doesn't lean to that at all. The lengthy preamble and instant post-danger backing out, plus acting evasive about it when Poe asks about it later, make sense for either a declaration of love, an announcement of being her long-lost brother, or a confession about some major misdeed.

Why didn't Palpatine just get his own kid?

• He needs someone to kill him so that he can then take over their body, presumably it's a symbolic or bloodline reason why he needs Rey, but why didn't he just have his own child abducted and get them to do the deed? Presumably if Rey is strong in the Force, her mother or father is as well, and would be just as suitable for the job.
  • Or heck, why didn't he just have more than one kid? If you want to pull a Grand Theft Me on your descendants, it seems rather short-sighted to only have one child. Even if Rey's father wasn't Force-Sensitive, eventually one of them was going to be.
  • Palpatine was basically (and possibly literally) a corpse attached to a bunch of machines. Making more children the normal way was unlikely to be an option. We saw that he tried cloning—that's where Snoke came from, and there were more clones in the vats. It's entirely possible he's been jumping from clone to clone for decades, similar to what happened in Legends. But then he finds a healthy descendant who is close to falling to the Dark Side, so he goes for that option instead.
  • It was Rey's father who was Palpatine's child, and it was the bounty hunter Palpatine sent after Rey's family that killed her dad, not the Emperor himself. Possibly Palpatine had previously assessed his son's Force-affinity as insufficient, so he only told the bounty hunter that he needed the girl; as he'd never mentioned that capturing the father in her place was a fallback option, the hunter saw no reason not to kill Rey's father to coerce her mother into revealing Rey's location.

Palpatine's Other Apprentices

• If Palpatine is using the powers of all the Sith, does this include Maul and Dooku and why? Dooku's spirit is unlikely to work with him again due to his obviously shocked look when he has Anakin kill him and Maul, while never an actual Heel–Face Turn, has stopped caring about the Sith and wants Luke to avenge him and Obi-Wan upon his deathbed.
  • Possibly, he can somehow supernaturally enslave those spirits and vampirize their power, regardless of what their "souls" might want? That wouldn't be any weirder than gobbling up Rey's spirit, which he can apparently do.
  • It seems more like a "Highlander" thing, where the Sith Apprentice consumes the power and essence of their Master. Sidious consumed Plagueis, Plagueis consumed Tenebrous, etc., all the way back to Zannah consuming Darth Bane. Which, if you read how that battle went down, makes this a bit of Fridge Brilliance. Maul, Tyranus, and Vader, all being weaker than Sidious, would be of no use to him in this regard. It also makes it Fridge Brilliant that Sidious wanted Luke to strike him down in anger, and also Fridge Brilliant that Vader stopped the ritual from happening.
  • Also, two of those three are likely out of his reach (Maul is still possibly alive, and Vader ceased to exist as Anakin subsumed him in his final moments).
  • To the above poster... Maul isn’t alive. Obi-Wan killed him in Rebels.
  • It could also be that simply becoming a Dark Force spirit changes your personality considerably. You no longer care about individual gripes, and become more concerned with the advancement of the Dark Side as a whole. This could also be why a really old, deeply orthodox Sith like Palpatine doesn't mind being struck down: he's already well on his way to caring more about the darkside than individual ambitions and grudges at this point.
  • The Dark Side Will Make You Forget has definitely been a thing for a long time.
  • The process seems to be that an apprentice eventually becomes powerful enough to kill their master, and then they become the new master, gaining the powers and being possessed by the spirit of the old master. The effect is cumulative, so Palpatine has the powers and portions of the personality of every past Sith Lord. Apprentices who fail to kill their master are failed apprentices, and do not become part of the Sith gestalt. The Rule of Two is therefore also a mechanism to concentrate the power of the Sith - it ensures that each apprentice who kills his master gains the power of every Sith Lord that went before in addition to their own.
  • It could have been figurative, and Palpatine (once again) underestimating his opponent. When he said every Sith lived in him, he meant that the great lineage of the Sith and their grand plan was reaching its climax in him. What he didn't understand was that when Rey said all the Jedi lived in her, she meant it literally - all the spirits of the Jedi were actively there helping her^note This might have been more obvious if the rumours that they were actually going to appear are true. After all, one of the main differences between Sith and Jedi is that the Sith are solitary and Jedi believe in unity and co-operation.
    • Maul's soul, if it's there, wouldn't help Sidious. He was never redeemed exactly, but his entire life after his first "death" was about raging against the fact that he'd been Sidious' tool, and not his prince like he'd been promised. It's nice to think he'd defy the old bastard one last time in death.
  • And what of Dooku? He was never redeemed either, but the look on his face when Palpatine tells Anakin to kill him is of pure betrayal, and unlike Maul, he doesn't even get the chance to dwell on being used because he's beheaded mere seconds after Palpatine's order.

Hux sux as a spy

• Even accepting his stated motives for aiding the Resistance at face value (despite them sounding very flimsy, for such momentous treason), Hux has no sane reason to reveal himself to Finn and Poe, two standard Resistance operatives. Compromising his very valuable cover to bail out two nobodies is about the last thing he should be doing, whether he is just nihilistically trying to sabotage Kylo Ren or somehow hoping to profit from it himself. What's more, these two are both people he has very good personal reasons to hate since they humiliated him in The Last Jedi. Yet now, he risks his life (and/or his ability to sabotage Kylo Ren, if he values that more) to save them, for no clear benefit whatever.
  • Seems like if he really wanted to sabotage Kylo Ren, a coup would have been more in-character.
  • It's not even that flimsy. When Hux found out that Snoke is dead, he tries to murder an unconscious Kylo so he could become the next supreme leader. But of course, Kylo woke up right before he could, forced choked him into submission, and pretty much did no better treatment of him than Snoke did. He was always against Kylo in all of the Sequel Trilogy.
  • It's simple shortsightedness on his part. The heroes getting away last time got egg on Hux's face, so if they get away from Kylo, it's egg on Kylo's face too. Possibly a bit of genius in there, since "of course" Hux would never help Finn and Poe escape, not after they humiliated him—so the only possible explanation is incompetence from the guys upstairs.
  • Presumably he assumed that the Resistance would get curb-stomped at Exegol, so giving them help made Kylo look bad without actually helping the Resistance at all. And in fairness, he was right, the Resistance did get curb-stomped, but then everyone else showed up to help.
  • Also, Finn and Poe are absolutely not "two nobodies." Poe is well known as not just the best pilot in the resistance, but one of Leia's top people, to the point that he's named general and leader of the resistance by her. Finn is a hero who is very nearly as well regarded by the Resistance, and who is personally responsible for the loss of Starkiller Base.
  • Not to mention these are two of the Resistance members who he's actually familiar with to some extent. He KNOWS FN-2187 defected to the Resistance, and he's spoken to Poe.
  • What weird is why would he choose this moment to betray the Order? The Emperor is alive! Who cares about some whiny brat anymore? Obviously all he'll ever get is to be a lackey. On the other hand, all those ships mean that Emperor will need competent military officers. Hux should be ecstatic!
  • Hux's characterization really makes no sense at all. TFA presented him as a First Order True Believer, devoted to bringing down the Republic and instilling the FO as the dominant power. He retained this characterization throughout TLJ, and even Snoke acknowledged Hux's rabid devotion to the cause. It's all well and good for RoS Hux to want to betray Kylo and sabotage him, but not in a "I don't care if [the Resistance] wins!" way. If anything, he would have made sure to bring Kylo down and then completely eliminate the Resistance himself—anything else shreds his motivation in TFA and TLJ to bits.
  • Hux's motivation makes sense if what he was most interested in was power, and if he saw the First Order primarily as his pathway to power. In this film Pryde is clearly in charge, and this might be a result of Kylo Ren not trusting Hux and giving Pryde more authority. If Hux believed the First Order was his way to power but that Kylo Ren slammed the door on him when he became Supreme Leader then it makes perfect sense for Hux to turn traitor in resentment. Everything he has worked for is going to be denied him because of Kylo Ren.
  • Character-wise, it makes quite a bit of sense if you believe that Hux, for all his bumbling, is in fact one of the most savvy Imperials out there; the First Order with Kylo Ren in charge is obviously going to the dogs, and to a secular-minded individual like him, Palpatine and his wacky Sith cult would look like lunatics even if their leader wasn't too weak to stand up straight. The Resistance might seem feeble on paper, but the First Order is a rotten edifice and the Final Order is an unknown quantity. It's a stretch for Hux to believe that the Resistance has a good chance of winning, given their track record in this film alone, but it's no stretch at all to imagine him abandoning a sinking ship.
  • But the thing is, does he really think the Resistance would just welcome him with open arms once they learn he's the spy? He was an active leader in the total genocide of like 5 planets. There's no way they would forgive him for that just because he helps them out later. So even if he is done with the First Order, it's absurd for him to be helping the faction that's certainly going to execute or imprison him for life if they win. It would make far more sense for him to just flee to some lonely corner of the galaxy where no one could ever find him.
  • For all we know that is what he plans to do once the Resistance has defeated (or sufficiently softened up) the First Order. Fleeing from the First Order while Kylo Ren is still in control would give Ren an excuse to hunt him down; it's best to wait until after he's been toppled, and then escape in the confusion. If all else fails, the Resistance, who brand themselves on being the reasonable party, would be slightly less willing to torture and kill him than someone like Ren would.
  • It should be glaringly obvious what he meant by that. He was telling Finn and Poe that he didn't help them out of any change in sides or goodness inside him. Besides, he was devoted to the First Order under Snoke as it was made. He would refuse to even recognize the FO under Kylo.

Was it necessary to hack C- 3 PO?

• C-3PO clearly states he knows the exact location of the planet Exegol, but he has a moral Restraining Bolt about talking about it, requiring the main characters to hack his memory. Why not let him navigate the ship himself (he's no pilot, but he's been shown to be capable of interfacing with the ship's computer) or even just enter the hyperdrive coordinates on the pilot's dashboard and let Poe do his job?
  • Because that would be translating the inscription. His programming must stop him from communicating any information given to him in the Sith language by any means, else he could just write it down and that would defeat the whole purpose.
  • But he's found ways of interpreting his programming creatively before, even simple ones. In ROTJ, he manages to impersonate a deity without really impersonating a deity.
  • He does not impersonate a deity - he just repeats what Luke tells him to say (which is a claim that he has powerful magic, not that he's a deity) and then Luke does the heavy lifting, so to speak. The novelization says that 3P0 explains that he's not divine before relating the story of the Rebel struggle against the Empire. That would explain why the Ewoks aren't worshiping him as a deity for the rest of the film.
  • Why couldn't just shut him down and download the data right out of his brain? Even if he has a lifetime worth of memories they could do the equivalent of a "Find all" for the Exegol coordinates.
  • Isn't that basically what Baba Frick does?
  • Yes, but why is "wipe his memory" plan A?
  • Because 3P0 tells them that's the only way. Apparently, it's not just that the data is in a hidden folder — it's part of his core programming that he is unable to transmit the text in any form. It's hard locked down, and the only way to get in is to "break the lock," and in this case, the lock is his memory.
  • So why couldn't 3P0 simply fly the Falcon to Exegol himself, and the other heroes ride along with him? He wouldn't have to transmit the information, just make direct use of it himself. Surely it'd be easier to download some basic piloting skills and navicomputer algorithms into a protocol droid than to track down a super-hacker Poe used to know, way back when? Especially when we know from the prequels that 3P0 can temporarily absorb partial programming from a combat-droid body his head's been stuck to.
  • Taking people with him to the location the dagger names would be the same as revealing what the dagger says. 3P0's programming is sophisticated enough to recognize that and not allow him to use that loophole.
  • Because 1) the dagger doesn't tell anything about where Exegol is. All it has is the location of the second wayfinder, and 2) figuring out the location required Rey intuiting that there was more to the dagger than it appeared.

Rey's body

• Whenever a Jedi dies, they becomes one with the Force and their body fades away instantly—we saw this with Obi-Wan, Yoda, Luke, etc. So why, when Rey dies, does her body stick around? Realistically there should have been nothing for Ben to crawl over to and revive.
  • Maybe she wasn't completely dead yet?
  • Also, it may not be an "all Jedi" thing. Maybe it only applies in certain circumstances, such as being at one with the Force, and at peace with the idea of death. Obi-Wan knew that he was going to die at Vader's hands, and was at peace knowing that the galaxy was in the hands of Luke, Leia, Han, and the rest. Yoda passed on knowing that he'd flung a light into the future, passing on what it meant to be a Jedi to Luke. Luke faded after finally doing what he should have years ago, saving the Resistance, and ultimately giving back hope to the galaxy. Notice that Leia didn't fade right away, until her son truly and completely redeemed himself. Perhaps Rey wasn't quite ready to die. After all, she knew her friends were still up there, and maybe wasn't ready to pass on yet.
  • A lot of Jedi died in the prequels and Clone Wars series(es) and didn't fade away. Qui-Gon Jinn being the most notable example, but the Jedi in Ep.2's arena fight, the numerous Jedi during the purges. Jedi only fade away in special situations, most likely in cases where they've accepted their oncoming death and greet it warmly.
  • Leia's body doesn't immediately disappear either. Perhaps the Jedi's spirit can stay nearby for a while to make sure it really wants to depart and become one with the Force, and when the spirit makes that choice, then the body disappears.
  • Neither Rey not Leia disappeared immediately because both of them were waiting for Ben. Rey was waiting for him to save her, and Leia was waiting for him to accompany her.
  • Does this mean Kylo wanted to die?
  • As horribly grim as it sounds...maybe. Maybe he knew that death would be the only way he could ever redeem himself. Maybe he thought dying would be an easy out rather than facing the consequences of his actions. Maybe his guilt made him suicidal. He was never a happy person.
    • It could also be that he feels there's no place for someone like him in whatever's coming next. He's a kinslayer, a person so deeply stuck in his own anger and hurt that he never could move on from it. Whereas Rey has experienced much worse pain, much more loss (his family sent him to his uncle to train, hers left her on a crapsack planet and died), and yet she could move on. Could accept the past and yet move on. So he knew that if one of them should survive, it's her. She can change the galaxy, he doesn't see himself being able to.

The Holdo maneuver

• So the Holdo maneuver is now considered a standard battle tactic? Considering it's said to work on a Million to One Chance but a successful use is displayed on the uprising montage at the end of the movie, does this mean that millions of ships are doing it now? It raises again the point about why no one thought of doing it earlier.
  • The fact that it's a Million to One Chance means it's not considered standard tactics. However, out of billions of civilians rising up to fight back, some of them are going to get the bright idea to try it, and some of the time it will actually work. They just didn't show all the times it failed because that doesn't fit the uplifting ending.
  • People like naming things, especially when it's naming it after someone that used the tactic to heroic means. It could've been better handled in Last Jedi, but most people recognized it, like pretty much every other case of sci-fi ship ramming, as being a "last desperate hope" maneuver. They just clarified that, yeah, it's super unlikely to work.
  • Possibly people have done it before. But give its nature as a last-ditch suicide maneuver that pulverizes pretty much everything in its backwash, other attempts may have taken place in a situation where nobody survived to explain what maneuver was used ... let alone, to name the tactic in honor of a specific individual's Heroic Sacrifice.
  • They say it's a Million to One Chance it will work, presumably to handwave why it wasn't used sooner or as often despite its Story-Breaker Power. But why is it so improbable to pull off given Holdo was able to pull it off as an apparent spur of the moment improvisation.
  • It at least requires 1. they be close enough and have enough time to aim the ram 2. the target not taking action during that time (it worked then because they didn't realize what Holdo was pulling until too late). Maybe the improbability is such a large craft lining it without the target noticing and shooting it down/evading/raising shields, and anything small enough to avoid notice would be too small to be expected to do worthwhile damage.
  • The best (fan)explanation I've read is that the lightspeed tracker installed on the supremacy makes it exist in both space and hyperspace leaving it vulnerable to hyperspace ramming.
    • Another possibility is that the Supremacy was at exactly the right range and Holdo calculated the jump timing EXACTLY right to be in the interim of realspace and hyperspace to be able to hit.
  • Just looking at it in The Last Jedi, the Holdo Maneuver has some drawbacks that mean it really would be a million-to-one shot. First, it's probably only doable during that "flicker of pseudomotion" as a ship is entering or exiting hyperspace. Before, it's just a regular ram, after, you're in hyperspace and the target is not, so you won't actually hit them. During that transition between realspace and hyperspace, the ship is something like a relativistic object, so hits brutally hard. Which means you need to be very close, because that flicker only lasts for about half a second. Close enough the enemy ship, if they know what you're doing, can bring all their guns to bear to stop you. Also, Holdo was clearly aiming for the Supremacy's centerline, but she hit it halfway down the starboard wing. Given its 60-kilometer width, she missed her target by a full 15 km, meaning she would have missed the 19 km long Executor if she'd been attempting to hyperram it broadside and aimed at the middle. And given the damage a relativistic object can do (impact at that speeds basically results in nuclear fission explosions), the Supremacy didn't get all that battered by it. So you need to be too close for comfort, might well miss anything smaller than a Super-Duper Star Destroyer, and you don't even get the full value of a relativistic impact on the enemy ship (yours is completely toaster-caked). Yeah, not a highly effective tactic.
  • Rogue One answers this. At the end we see several ships trying to jump to hyperspace when Vader's ship pops out in front of them. Some of them make it and blip on out of there, some of them splatter across the hull of the Star Destroyer, and some bounce off and are merely damage. None of them were in the milisecond precise phase needed to obliterate themselves and Vader. Space ships in Star Wars are incredibly durable, and habitually fall out of orbit and land with minimal to no damage, so they are clearly made with superior materials to what we have that have very different breaking properties. Finally, Rebels and Resistance have small starship budgets and, aside from fanatics like Saw, don't see the point of wasting them in suicide attacks that have low-to-no chance of success; not when they are better used in conventional attacks. It is possible even Holdo didn't think she'd get so lucky as to one shot the Supremacy like that, and just thought it would be a conventional ram attack that bought a little time.

Interdictor ships

• Interdictor ships, which prevent hyperspace jumps, have been established decades ago; rather than Earth-Shattering Kaboom cannons, wouldn't it be more useful to install Interdiction generators on capital ships?
  • Why? They didn't have any need to prevent ships from fleeing, they just wanted to blow up planets. Interdictors are very specialized support craft, they're not worth the expense of putting them on every single ship. They probably had interdictors somewhere, but there was never any need to mention them because no one tried to flee at any point. Remember, interdictors don't do much to prevent ships from jumping in, just from jumping out.
  • They would prevent the Holdo maneuver, which is a jump out and is established now to be commonly used.
  • Except it's not commonly used. In fact, maybe that's why it's a Million to One Chance; most fleets big enough for the maneuver to be useful against will likely have an interdictor on hand. We only see the effect of one Holdo Maneuver, and as a minor background element in the denouement. We didn't see all the times it failed.

Hyperspace skipping

• The very first words about hyperspace travel from Han Solo were: "Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?". So how come Poe Dameron can do hyperjumps at random as if he was flying a crop duster without getting killed?
  • You could fly right through a star, but you might not. Poe is being reckless due to necessity, but his gamble pays off. The others in the ship are alarmed by the process, showing that it's a very risky ploy. Either an Ace Pilot can minimize the risk to some degree, or it's just sheer Plot Armor that sees them through.
  • Before the last jump, you even hear Poe say, "Last one — maybe forever." It's clearly a desperation move that he thinks could kill them.
  • When he gets back and Rey finds out what he did, she flat-out says "the Falcon can't hyperspace skip." "Obviously, it can." So whether it's skill or Plot Armor, it's definitely not something it's supposed to be able to do.
  • Seems like the scene demonstrated exactly what Han meant. What Poe did was insane. He really could have flown them through a star. We saw in the scene how close they came to returning to normal space right in the middle of things.
  • I'm willing to accept that lightspeed skipping is dangerous, but I can't understand is how it is so much faster than regular travel. Poe goes through about four or so planets, each of which are in different systems, and did so instantaniously, when it's supossed to take time to travel between systems. Moreover, if you're just randomly using a lightspeed jump without putting in co-ordinates, why did Poe constantly appear on the surface of planets, when space is almost completely empty and jumping without co-ordinates should spit you out in empty space?
    • Could be that Poe was purposely stopping the jump whenever he was getting anywhere near a gravity well, in hopes of avoiding the star or supernova or planet instead of splatting into it, and started the new jump once he knew he'd be free of it. Cease a jump whenever your sensors indicate an imminent danger of splattage, and all your jumps are going to end near planets. Given the human response time, starting to stop as soon as the warning lights up could take you out of hyperspace in atmosphere more often than not.
    • It's not necessarily faster, but it's harder to track. He's likely making multiple short hops (think something like boarding multiple flights, each only going a state or two over), using the rapid skips between realspace and hyperspace to throw any attempts at tracking off.

Hyperspace tracking on TIEs?

• How are the TIE fighters tracking the Falcon? One year ago, they needed the Supremacy to do math to figure out the most likely destination of a ship. Now, fighters are staying on the Falcon like lekku on a Twi'lek during hyperspace skipping. What's going on?
  • In war technological advancements are pursued to gain any advantage possible over the enemy. Hux's hyperspace tracker in the Last Jedi did work: it led the First Order to the Resistance and it was only Holdo's ramming move that gave the Resistance some breathing room. The First Order probably took note of the success of the technology (with Hux probably tooting his own horn) and decided to pursue it, resulting in it becoming small enough to be fitted on TIE fighters and efficient enough to bring up possible locations in seconds rather than minutes.
  • Maybe the Falcon is being monitored/bugged.
  • Probably not as as Kylo Ren loathed the Falcon and would've had it destroyed, not bugged, if he'd had a clue where it was.
  • Maybe it's simpler than that, and the TIEs were hacking the Falcon's navicomputer to get their destinations. Thus Poe couldn't shake them, and had to lead them into crashing.
  • Or it's easier to track someone when you're right on their tail. Maybe they didn't so much track the Falcon as ride its wake.
  • As small fighting craft deployed from larger vessels, it'd make sense for TIE fighters to have the ability to lock onto a larger First Order vessel and tag along with it, so they won't get left behind if the Star Destroyer they're escorting has to retreat or redeploy via lightspeed on short notice. Possibly that technology was fused with the recent breakthroughs in tracking to let them tag along with non-Order vessels too.
  • Hyperspace tracking is normally impossible because the amount of space to track is too vast to process quickly enough without the special, super-fast supercomputer. Maybe the micro jumps the Falcon made were small enough for the TIEs computers to track.
    • Or the TIEs were slaving their nav computers to a larger vessel, using the main computer with the tracking system to relay coordinates to their jumps

Location of Exegol

• When people arrive to Exegol, they can clearly see the stars from it. If you can see the stars from it, then you can see it from those stars and, in theory, to fly/jump to it from them. It's ok if the planet's coordinates of a secret, but it's not the freaking Eye of Terror that you need some "tunnel" to go through. So, then what is up with that weird space cave that you need the wayfinder to navigate through?
  • Perhaps it's that near the edge of known space, all sorts of anomalies exist and you need the wayfinder to avoid flying directly into some kind of spatial distortion that would pulp your ship. Think something like the Grand Line of One Piece. In theory, you could make it, but the conditions and hazards are too dangerous to want to try.
  • When Rey is flying there they mention following her and talk a lot about "Hyperspace storms" "gravity wells" etc. It could be that the the "cave" (which is really a nebula of some sort) is actually the safest way there.

They don't fly now!

• When the FO attack the heroes in the desert, we clearly see several TIEs. And yet, the heroes are only chased by two bikes and two jet-troopers. Where did the TIEs go?
  • Either they were being held in reserve in case of an escape attempt (the Order didn't know how many people were there, so they could be watching the Falcon, in case there's other Resistance personnel ready to take off), or they would have taken too long to get to, get fired up, and get airborne.
  • They already were airborne, and as for the Falcone, you don't need two TIE-fighters to "watch" an idle spaceship - either send in a couple ground troopers to disable it or just blast it and be done with it.
  • It could be that TIE fighters aren't tuned well for tracking smaller, faster vehicles like speeders or other light land vehicles, so the bikes would yield better results. As to the Falcon, they didn't KNOW if it was idle. For all they knew, Rose, Maz, and other Resistance operatives were in there waiting for a signal, or actively smuggling something off-planet while the faces drew off pursuit.
  • Let's see: they're armored, they can fly fast, they can hover, they have powerful repeater weapons, they (probably) have radars. What else do you need to "track" a land vehicle across flat open terrain? "they didn't KNOW if it was idle" - then just blast it and be done with it.

Oh, right, of course they fly now

• Why exactly wouldn't Finn, of all people, have known about jet-troopers?
  • Finn was a janitor who was given one chance to be a ground trooper on a canon fodder mission, and then defected. There is probably a lot of things about the order's troopers he doesn't know.
  • Also, it's possible that the Jet Trooper project was still in the beta phases when Finn defected, so he figured that it wouldn't have been in active use yet.
  • The first reply is incorrect. Finn wasn't a random janitor given armor and a blaster, he was trained as an elite stormtrooper by Captain Phasma for years. Just because he did sanitation while off duty or while training doesn't mean he's a janitor as a career. So there's not really much of an explanation as to why Finn wouldn't know about them, let alone Poe, who faced jet troopers in the comics.
  • In which case, it's likely that both Finn and Poe would assume that the Jet Troopers would be assigned to high-profile areas where they'd be more needed, rather than as a pursuit force on a desert planet.
  • Finn's information on First Order vessels and equipment is clearly no longer current by Episode IX. He admits that he has no clue where the detention cells might be on Ren's flagship, and is less successful at guiding the rescue party through that destroyer. It's also likely that when Kylo seized control of the First Order from Snoke, he approved the deployment of new equipment and weaponry that Snoke - an older and more skeptical commander - deemed too experimental.
  • It could've been a simple "Oh, Crap!, if it wasn't bad enough with the bikers, they also have the flyers!" crumpled into a single exclamation. People aren't usually the most eloquent when they're under stress.

Uncommon jet packs

• Why would any of the characters be surprised by troops with jet packs? Boba Fett clearly established jet packs were a normal thing 40 years before this movie takes place. The only thing surprising is that soldiers don't use them more often.
  • No, Boba Fett established that Boba Fett had a jetpack. In the rest of the movies up to now, the only other guy to use one was Jango Fett; it might well even be the same jetpack. "One guy used it one time" does not equal, "It's a normal thing that should never surprise anyone with its appearance." And even if they were a known thing, that still doesn't mean nobody should ever be surprised by one's sudden appearance where it hadn't been used before.
  • No, while only Boba Fett and Jango Fett may have used a jetpack in the movies, jetpacks have been widely used are are common in the Star Wars galaxy. Its used by military forces in videos games like Battlefront 2 and tv shows like Clone Wars and Rebels, used by Mandalorians, clones, battle droids and stormtroopers, and yes these shows are canon. In fact, in a tie in comic to the sequels films, Finn and Poe encounter jet troopers before the events of Rise of Skywalker, and this is canon too, meaning they shouldn't be surprised at all. Finn of all people shouldn't be surprised, as his reaction indicates that at the very least FO stormtroopers have never used jetpacks, when they obviously did before.
    • It could be more a surprise that a First Order pursuit force on a desert planet has them. You'd expect them on planets like Bespin or Kamino, where there's a lot of vertical space to cover

Regarding Snoke's origin

• Okay, Palpatine cloning Snoke to control the First Order from afar makes sense to Palpatine's character, but if the First Order didn't know about Palpatine being alive to begin with, how the hell did they accept Snoke as their Supreme Leader?
  • Perhaps a combination of charisma, vision, and some well-placed Final Order loyalists?
  • Possibly the same way Kylo Ren convinced Hux he was in charge?
  • Pryde seems to be the only First Order member aware of Palpatine's manipulation, so I'm guessing he threw his military support behind Snoke and any other prospective Supreme Leaders had no choice but to fall in line.
  • I'm guessing Snoke was intentionally engineered to resemble Palpatine as closely as possible, likely so he could be the kind of person ardent Imperial loyalists would feel inclined to serve. Imagine engineering the perfect Aryan superman to appeal to neo-Nazis. Or just think Serpentor.
  • In relation, what's with the retconned history? Previous canon material says he witnessed the empire's rise and fall, something he could not have done if he was a creation of Palpatine after being resurrected. Or is it that the Snoke we saw was just the clone of a real Snoke?
  • If Snoke was simply a puppet of Palpatine the whole time, without a will of his own, then him viewing the rise and fall of the Empire is *technically* true...from a certain point of view. That hasn't been confirmed ether way, however.
  • Why must there be a retcon? It hasn't been confirmed exactly when Palpatine made Snoke. Maybe he made Snoke while he was Chancellor and had him run a project in the shadows, not coming out until the Empire fell.
  • Also, it's possible that Snoke had implanted memories of Palpatine's rise and fall, so as to lend credence to his ascendancy.
  • Palpatine is very vulnerable in his current state of Dark Lord on Life Support. Operating through intermediaries keeps his enemies chasing them rather than tracking him down. "Supreme Leader Snoke is the head of the First Order, let's go after him." Snoke lets Palpatine control the First Order and if Snoke gets taken out, Palpatine is still safe.

Who is the "choir" in Palpatine's lair?

• I.E all those hooded figures we see gathered around who chant and are destroyed when he is. Are they like the undead forms of old Sith Lords (as he said he had the power of all the Sith in him?) And why don't they do anything but chant?
  • When Palpatine dies the resulting shock wave tosses the robbed figures like rag dolls but they have not physical bodies. They were either Sith spirits or more likely were puppets directly controlled by Palpatine with no free will or their own. So when he died whatever Force magic that summoned them dissipated as well.
  • Or they're fanatical devotees of the Sith religion who don't happen to be Force-sensitive, so function as servants and crafters of planet-killing vessels. Their worship of Palpatine and/or the untold generations of Sith he embodies is purely to puff his ego and intimidate Rey.
  • Alternatively, they're just Sith loyalists who've been stuck on Exegol all those years, since no one else can get there and it's very difficult to leave. When Palpatine returned, they jumped at the chance to revive the old Sith traditions.
  • According to the Visual Dictionary, they're cultists.

Why didn't Palpatine just announce his return from the start (of The Force Awakens)?

• Considering the First Order was mostly made up of former Imperials or at least pro-Empire people, wouldn't this be more effective for rallying people than just sending some new guy they've never heard of? To use an imperfect analogy: Imagine a Bad Future were some Neo-Nazis have started their own country and plan to take over more. Now imagine Adolf Hitler came Back from the Dead but, instead of revealing to the Nazis he was back, just sent some new henchman of his that his would-be followers had never seen before. Which would be a better course of action?
  • While it might bring in more pro-Empire oriented people, it would also create much bigger opposition to First Order. There are still many of those who remember or fought in Galactic Civil War. Palpatine announcing his return from the beginning would paint huge target on First Order and New Republic would most likely consider FO an actual threat and dedicate more resources and energy into combating it.
  • Also, it has become Palpatine's modus operandi to operate in secret only revealing himself when he is sure of his victory. As he did before, he would first need to consolidate his own power and rebuild his lost empire. Also, he would have been too weak to do so himself as he was literally a Dark Lord on Life Support.
  • Maybe worried about spooking any Imperial loyalists who were squeamish about Dark Side powers, like old Tagge. A leader who's come back from the dead thanks to dark, unholy power? Even Space Nazis might start thinking "Are we the baddies?". Though that makes Snoke a rather puzzling choice for successor...
  • He was also awaiting confirmation that the last Jedi to stand up to him is dead and gone. And, possibly, for his Final Order cultists to perfect the miniaturization of Death Star technology for use on his planet-killer fleet.
  • Possible answer, at the start of TFA the New Republic is mostly ignoring the First Order as a remnant and unimportant group until Starkiller base. If Palpatine had announced himself at any point before that it might have incited the Republic to take action, since it's the return of an old tyrant.
  • If Hitler’s “some new henchman” is Donald Trump, it would work just fine.

Why is the ocean so turbulent near the Death Star II piece?

• Is the implication supposed to be it's so big it causes tidal disturbances? If so, that's a cool aversion of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale
  • It could have just been choppy weather. The waves weren't that big, even by Earth standards.
  • As a possibility, the sheer residual Dark Side energy of that segment is causing environmental disruptions. Especially considering that it's the segment that held Palpatine's throne room and a SITH ARTIFACT.
  • The suggestion that the crossing will be easier in the morning implies that it's a tidal effect that will be less intense at other times of day.
  • Tidal effects make a lot of sense for a world orbiting a big Jovian planet.

Luke's X-Wing

• How does Luke's X-Wing still work? It's been buried in the ocean for years and Luke's been tearing pieces off of it.◊ What's more, if it worked this whole time why didn't Luke fly to Crait aboard his X-Wing instead of doing the Force Illusion across light years that ended up killing him?
  • For the first - they're just that rugged. For the second - because he would've been blasted to pieces in seconds and wouldn't have been able to provide even the small distraction he did, that is if he'd even made it there in time at all.
  • Would he have been blasted? The Millennium Falcon managed to fly by under First Order cover just fine and midway through the battle all the First Order's TIE's involved were destroyed.
  • Even if he managed to sneak in, he would walk out and be immediately obliterated by barrage from First Order walkers. Precisely what happened in movie except without advantage of, you know, not actually being there to be obliterated.
  • Why would Luke get blasted by First Order walkers? Luke could've done the exact same projecting trick while sitting in his X-Wing on Crait. Maybe not even dying as a result of having to create a convincing illusion halfway across the galaxy.
  • One, getting near Crait would take time, which he didn't know how much they had. Two, that would potentially expose him to getting blown to bits by an errant attacker. Three, it's possible he knew he had to die, so that the galaxy could well and truly move forward from the Jedi and their mistakes.
  • The only logical explanation is that the X-Wing was too waterlogged to work right out of the water and needed a day or two to dry out before it would work, and Luke had to go do his trick right then.
  • Another point is that he was aiming to slow Kylo down and force him to consider that conflict wasn't going to always work. A ghostly, intangible projection would do just that. As to why, perhaps he knew it was time. That in order for the galaxy to move on, he, and by extension, the Jedi needed to die out.
  • Four, Luke admitted to Rey that he'd cut himself off from the Force for years. Possibly he'd let his power dwindle to such a degree that he could only be sure of pulling off such a feat, whether as a projection or while physically present, from a place of intense power like the first Jedi temple.
  • Luke prepped it to be safely hidden in the ocean before he put it there. When he first came to Ach-to it was to seek the sacred Jedi texts. Only after he found them and didn't find any answers to where he had gone wrong with Ben Solo did he decide to stay permanently. The X-wing was always still spaceworthy, but he used Force Projection rather than his X-wing because by the time he decided to intervene the X-wing wouldn't get to Krait in time. Plus the fact that being a projection meant he wouldn't be killed by being blasted by hundreds of First Order troops as soon as he arrived. Also, X-wings are built to last. This same X-wing spent days under water in Dagobah's swamps without any before-hand preparation and was still perfectly flyable afterwards.

If Palpatine is dear old...

• ...grampy of Rey, then who is Grandma? And it was voluntary, because eek. And how did this all work out? Presumably he would have kept them under their thumb, but at some point, maybe when he was killed the first time, they escaped his grasp and that of the Empire?
  • Sly Moore maybe? He had plenty of toadies in the prequels who seemed kinda into that weird, scarred and deformed tyrant. As for the rest, Sure, Let's Go with That.
  • Not saying this is impossible, but it would make Rey's father half-Umbaran and Rey a quarter Umbaran, when they show no signs of any alien heritage. Still, maybe that explains Rey's enhanced strength, considering how formidable Umbaran soldiers are.
  • Well, we have our answer now — according to the novelization, it was all just cloning. There was no grandma because her "father" was actually a failed Palpatine clone.

Ground strike?

• Why bother with a ground strike on the beacon when they could just blast it from above? They had Y-Wings and B-Wings, both craft known for carrying overwhelming firepower, so why bother with a horseback cavalry charge?
  • It's never said, but an explanation could be that the tower was heavily shielded, and the only way to get through was to land and walk through the shield, as in The Battle of Hoth or The Battle of Naboo.
  • Except that their entire plan hangs on shields somehow not working in atmosphere (at all, or at Exegol specifically). Or maybe it's just Star Destroyers - everything else can be shielded in the atmosphere except them. Also, if that was the case, why would Pryde switch the navigation to his ship, thus making it a target? Just bombard the ground around the shield, obliterating everything that tries to come near!
  • Shooting at your own planet is generally a bad idea. And shooting at the thing you're trying to protect is an even worse one, because one blast that's even slightly off — remember that they're firing from near orbit — is going to blow it up.

Why is cloning yourself into a new body considered inherently a dark side power?

• There is the real reason (otherwise, all of the Jedi and other good force users would make clones and never get Killed Off for Real), but is there any in-universe reason other than Because the writers said so? It's not like you have to strangle a thousand kittens every time you get a new body or anything like that.
  • In a sense, it's considered "Evil" because it's acting in defiance of the natural order of things. It's an unnatural and selfish act that flies in the face of the cycle of life.
  • sounds like a massive Appeal to Nature to me. (I'm not blaming you, that could well be the official explanation. I'm just saying if it is, it's not a very good one, as by that "logic" you could claim flying in space ships is evil, as humans weren't naturally designed to survive in space.)
  • In a sense, there's a difference. Spacecraft and the like aren't fundamentally screwing with the "Soul". However, jumping a being's essence into another body falls into the wheelhouse of messing with the fabric of life and death (a la Horcruxes).
  • Out of universe, it's an Appeal to Nature and No Transhumanism Allowed. In-universe, the Force doesn't want people to transfer bodies, which means the only way to do so is by perverting the Force, which is the Dark Side. And in fairness, the whole "death is a natural part of life" thing isn't so bad when there's objective proof of an afterlife (even if there's not much detail on it). So think of it this way: Avoiding death is perfectly fine, but the only reason to seek immortality is if you know your afterlife is going to be horrible because you're an evil bastard.
  • Clones in the Star Wars 'Verse have minds and souls of their own; we know this because of Yoda's interactions with the first-generation storm troopers in Clone Wars. It's not making a clone of yourself that's Dark, it's making one and then ousting the hapless clone's own consciousness - essentially murdering your own twin/offspring - in order to keep yourself alive long after you should be making way for new life.

The in-universe purpose of the special Sith dagger

• What is the underlying purpose of the Sith dagger's special function of having Sith runes and a specially carved blade in order to tell someone where to find one of two Sith wayfinders in the wreck of the Death Star II? Is Palpatine looking for a new apprentice by making it part of a test? Is it part of a Gambit Roulette in getting Rey to find him that he foresaw somehow?
  • It's part of a Gambit Roulette to draw Rey to him if she managed to kill the assassin herself. He either wants Rey dead or possessed, whichever one will get rid of the future last hope of the Jedi.
  • Maybe also intended to help Ochi-the-Jedi-hunter find his way to Exegol to collect payment after grabbing young Rey. "Bring this dagger to Endor and solve his puzzle to get the map to Exegol" seems needlessly complicated, but Palpatine's ploys in the prequels seem to suggest a degree of Complexity Addiction.

Nothing in the Resistance Budget for Ion Torpedoes

• The only reason the Resistance strike on Exegol has any hope of succeeding is that shields don't work in Exegol's atmosphere, leaving the Star Destroyers vulnerable to attack. Under those circumstances, an Ion Torpedo attack like the one seen against an unshielded destroyer in Rogue One should have had the ships falling from the sky like stones. Instead none of the Resistance ships appear to be so equipped and they instead opt for strafing runs on the planet-killer guns (which admittedly prove spectacularly effective once they are able to get past the TIE Fighter screens).
  • To be fair, the Resistance is both 1) scraping by on a very minimal budget, so they may not even be able to afford a worthwhile amount of Ion Torpedoes, and 2) scrambling all ships in an emergency, last-ditch attempt to stop the Final Order. They're launching from a jungle base, with minimal facilities, so they couldn't swap loadouts quickly enough

Why did Palpatine need to use Rey?

• It's not expressly stated why but Palpatine seemed rather fixated on using Rey as his new body. Why not use Kylo Ren when he showed up at the beginning of the film, who was already very strong in the Force, already inclined to use the Dark Side, and perfectly willing to kill him at the time instead?
  • He didn't, he was just playing Xanatos Speed Chess. His goal is to destroy the Jedi. Since Rey showed up, and hates him, have her kill him, possess her, no more Jedi.
  • Kylo Ren was (one of) the backup plan(s). Sidious knew that Kylo would eventually turn on him, but also that he had already been beaten by Rey twice, so obviously she was stronger and his first choice.
    • Arguably, Palpatine never needed Rey until after Ben Solo got redeemed since so far it seems that Palpatine was molding Kylo Ren into a perfect host body for himself. Ren is a scion of the most powerful Force bloodline ever, is in great physical condition and is a darksider that is too mentally unstable to resist the possession. Because of Rey, and later Leia, his grip on Ben grew increasingly loose, hence the urgent need for a suitable replacement. Rey was actually his last minute choice; before, he wanted her dead to get Ben back under his control.
    • Then why did he stop Kylo from killing him in the very start of the movie? He was certainly neck deep in the Dark Side at that moment.
      • Palpatine may not yet know about the Force Dyad, but he has to be aware that Ren and Rey share a potent Force bond. Also, Ren was growing increasingly independant and irreverent, which likely didn't help Palpatine's odds of success. Chances are, he was concerned that Rey could sense the Senat taking over Ren and help him fight off the possession. Since he had only one attempt he then erred on the side of caution and decided to first remove the troublemaker and weaken Ren's resolve in one swoop.

Luke, Exegol, and Force Ghosts

• Okay, so Luke spent years searching for Exegol, possibly because he knew about the hidden fleet and/or Palpatine's return. But he never found it because he needed the wayfinder. Fine. So why the hell didn't the ghosts of Yoda, Obi-wan, or especially Anakin ever tell him where the damn wayfinder was? Especially egregious with Anakin, because one of them was IN HIS OLD HOME on Mustafar.
  • Possibly the Force Ghosts didn't want Luke to find the place until after he'd passed on what he'd learned, at least to Leia. Alternately, Palpatine may never have told Vader about the Wayfinders, as Vader would most likely have tried to kill Palpatine to get his mechanical mitts on Exegol's clone-receptacle technology: gear with which he could restore his own dismembered body and/or try to bring Padmé back to life.
  • Also, possibly, the Force knew it wasn't Luke's place to find Exegol. That was Rey's path to walk, not his, so that trail had to go cold.
  • Exegol is definitely a Dark Side site, and the Dark Side tries to stay hidden. Why would Light Side Force ghosts know where it is located? Yoda, Obi-Wan, etc. may never have known where it was, or even where the wayfinders to find it were.
  • As stated in the opening point, the first wayfinder that Kylo Ren found WAS IN VADER'S HOUSE on Mustafar. So clearly Vader knew about Exegol and the way to locate it. Which means that it makes no sense that Anakin's ghost never once told Luke about the wayfinder, which again, was in his own home. Unless, of course, Anakin/Vader is even dumber than the prequels made him out to be.
  • The first Wayfinder being in Vader's fortress only tells us that Vader knew it was a relic of importance. It doesn't prove he knew why it was important, or even that it was specifically Sith in origin; for all we know, it's just one of several rare artifacts that Palpatine had Vader lock away for safekeeping with no explanation.
  • So, why would he leave it with Vader in the first place? Obviously he didn't trust him, so it wasn't a "safe" keeping at all.
  • Yeah because nothing says not trusting Vader like keeping him as an apprentice for 20 some years.

When was the Sith dagger made?

• The movie makes it seem the Sith dagger is ancient, but it has coordinates to the wayfinder. The wayfinder coordinates lead to the Death Star II wreckage, which occurred about 30 years ago. And the blade's serration and measuring device (the curved thing that comes out the bottom) lines up perfectly with the wreckage. Was the Sith dagger made years before that and the coordinates only recently inscribed or was the dagger made more recently, within the 30 year time span? If made within the 30 year time span, it would have to be before Rey's parents were killed but after the Emperor was already on Exegol. But it would have had to be made recently since it lines up with the wreckage and gives the exact location of the wayfinder. But then who made the dagger in the first place and knew the Sith language to inscribe with the coordinates when Palpatine was already on Exegol? Knowledge of the Sith language was seemingly limited in the first place, so who put the inscription on it and when?
  • Another possibility is that it was made in older times, but by a seer of the Sith. Someone who could accurately predict the future enough to know what would transpire
  • Wouldn't that make it worse though? That means the ancient Sith knew Sidious' plan would fail, but either Sidious did not, even though it would have said so on the dagger, or he was so confident he could Screw Destiny.
  • Sidious seemed to think that his plan was to have Rey find him, without also foreseeing that she would resist his attempts to seduce her to the Dark Side. The Sith seer who made the dagger and gave it to the assassin who killed Rey's parents could have been operating under his orders, and Sidious himself foresaw that Rey would find and be able to use the dagger to find the wayfinder.
  • It could be that the prophecy foreseen was, as prophecy usually is, extremely vague and subject to a great deal of interpretation. It may have, for example, foretold that the Jedi would end on Exegol, which Sidious took to mean the Sith would triumph. What happened instead was Rey destroying him and the Sith utterly, and creating something new, that is neither Jedi nor Sith.
  • Sentinel Droids and Operation Cinder personnel, most likely. C-3PO’s reboot briefly turned him into a Sentinel Droid, for all that matters. Rey’s dad is implied to be on Jakku because his ship crashed there after the last battle.
  • Most likely it had to be made between the end of Ro TJ and at least 20 years before TFA. So maybe during Operation Cinder makes sense, as does it being older than that. My main concern is it perfectly lining up with the Death Star wreckage. Sith/Jedi prophecies are vague, and the dagger only gave coordinates for the planet or at least the general area the wayfinder is. So it either had to be made during the time skip, in which case Sidious would have prepared for Rey to eventually find it, or it was based on prophecy (vague or not) and it was "the will of the Force" for the dagger placement to work out. I'll lean more toward the dagger is ancient, but the inscription was written down during the time skip, based on the wreckage of the Death Star with the exact location of the wayfinder and Rey essentially trusted the Force to find it.
  • It could just be an ancient style or an older dagger that's been modified at some point to include the directions to the wayfinder.
  • Again though if its ancient and only had coordinates on it to locate the Death Star wreckage, fine. But the fact it led specifically to the exact location in the wreckage makes it questionable how "ancient" the dagger is.
  • The "ancient" part is the language the directions are written in, which is only known by Sith and the Sith Cultists who made the dagger, and was banned from translation by the Republic.
  • The novel Shadow of the Sith finally explains the dagger: apparently the dagger itself is ancient, but when the Sith Eternal give it to Ochi the edges matching the outline of the Death Star wreckage and the inscription itself were recent modifications they made to it.

Rey and Ben vs Sidious

• After Ben joins Rey before Sidious, both heroes strike a fighting pose and prepare to... wait a second, what were they going to do before Sidious incapacitated them? Kill him? But that's what he wanted! Was it supposed to go different because there were two of them? Would each only get half the Sidious' spirit? Or because they would kill him in a "noble" way?
  • Well, Sidious wanted them to strike him down in anger, at that point, they were calm, and in tune with each other. They would have foiled Papa Palpatine's Grand Theft Me plan.
  • More specifically, he needs one of them to kill him in order to kill him, i.e. in hatred and vengeance. If one of the pair kills him to defend the other, it's not a Dark enough act to facilitate the transfer; if it was, Palpatine would probably have possessed Vader and finished Luke off using Vader's body at the end of the original trilogy.
  • OP: But he specifically used Resistance members' lives as a collateral against Rey, as in, if she wants to save them, she has to kill him and become the empress. She was also calm. It's not like in RotJ where Luke had to succumb to his anger to defeat Vader who was defending Palpatine. Also, neither Rey nor Ben knew that Palpatine was a threat to them, so the self-defence argument is kinda shaky.
  • Rey kills him in anger, he merges with her. Rey kills him in despair, to submit so he can merge with her, he merges with her. Rey kills him calmly, without the Dark Side, and resists the merging...things get dicey for Sheev.
  • That's assuming that the next thing Rey and Ben were going to do was double-shank him. Why couldn't they simply be raising their lightsabers in defence as they face down an enemy with unknown power? Then they'd have time to think of a different strategy.
    • Or, they were going to fight him, but not kill him. They could easily aim to disable him (cut off an arm, destroy the life support machines, etc), then leave him to his fate. Jedi training stressed the idea of fighting to disable, not kill (graze the weapon hand to leave a bad injury, remove the weapon limb, destroy the weapon itself, etc)

Pryde killing Hux

• Knowing Hux is the spy that betrayed the First Order for the Resistance (Or so they think was the reason) and all Pryde does is shoot him dead? Realistically he would have Hux imprisoned or maybe even tortured for whatever information he may have had from said Resistance. He didn't even demand an explanation, said explanation being he wants Kylo Ren to lose not the Resistance to win. Plus his loyalty is to Palpatine, who by the way isn't really known for quick, non-sadistic deaths (The closest being Kolar, Tinn & Fisto when they try to arrest him in episode 3 and that's just so he can duel Windu until Anakin shows up.), more than he is to Kylo so he was likely going to turn on Kylo himself anyway to serve him again and having Hux around can help. There's being a No-Nonsense Nemesis and then there's wasting resources just to kill a traitor without trial.
  • Simplest answer? Pryde and Sidious don't give a Womp Rat's ass about what Hux may or may not have told anyone. The Final Order has, by their account, WON.

Jakku was the worst possible place to hide Rey

• So apparently Rey's parents took Rey to Jakku because it's an out-of-the-way planet where Palpatine would never find her. The problem is, Palpatine had a large number of Imperial-era projects on Jakku, and there might very well he Imperial contacts ready to help him with his search present. Jakku would probably be one of the first Palpatine would look for her, yet he never does, and Rey's parents seemingly didn't think of this. This problem is similar to Luke being left on Tatooine, only worse because Vader would not independently have a reason to go to Tatooine, while Palpatine would certainly have independent reason to go to Jakku. So, why was Rey taken to Jakku, and why was she not found?
  • No, the Emperor didn't have forces on Jakku. No one did. It was a hole in the middle of nowhere that no one cared about and people only knew the name because a battle happened to be fought there. Rey was just a random scavenger among thousands.
  • Yes, Jakku was pretty obscure for most people. But Palpatine's contingency was primarily based around the Observatory on Jakku. Palpatine has connections on Jakku, and he should have looked for Rey there. At least maybe Rey's parents made the choice because they didn't know about Palpatine's Jakku projects.
  • Jakku actually makes sense. It's for the same reason why Luke was hidden on Tatooine despite it being Anakin's home planet. Vader/Anakin wanted nothing else to do with Tatooine and abandoned it, as much as he could. He never had a reason to go back nor wanted to, since it would be a reminder of his old life. It could be the same thing with Rey. By putting her on a place Palpatine once had interest in, it was the perfect hiding spot because the planet itself, Jakku, was no longer of interest to him. And possibly doubles as a hiding in plain sight, like with putting Leia on Alderaan but having her interact many times with officials who knew Padmé, like Tarkin, though they never bring it up.
  • According to the novel Shadow of the Sith, Rey's parents didn't leave her on Jakku to hide her from Palpatine. They hid her there temporarily to keep her safe from Ochi, just until they were able to shake him off and meet up with Luke and Lando, and then they were planning to go back and get her. They chose Jakku because they had had a working relationship with Unkar Plutt when they lived there before, and he was the only person they could trust to look after Rey.

Exegol vs. Korriban/Moraband

• Exegol is stated to be the secret world of the Sith. However, previously the Sith homeworld was Korriban, renamed "Moraband" in the new canon. What is the distinction between the two, and why did Abrams use a new world instead of Korriban/Moraband?
  • The Sith had plenty of worlds, and Korriban was never their origin, just one of their most famous throne worlds. As for why it wasn't used, it's absolutely covered in Sith tombs, not really suitable for building an entire fleet. If nothing else, it would be a distraction for the audience.
  • Exegol could have been a hidden research facility, while Korriban or Moraband were the home worlds/origin planets.
  • Just as the Rebels had their own secret holdout bases squirreled away across the galaxy at places like Yavin IV, Hoth, and Crait, so too did the Sith. There's no reason to even assume Exegol is the only such world, just the one where Palpatine was building his fleet.

No Tatooine tourism?

• Tatooine looks as rural and bare as ever, and Luke's childhood home is being swallowed by sand. Why hasn't Tatooine had tourists flocking to visit, considering its importance in galactic history?
  • Hutts, Sand People, other scum and villainy. Also, new war. Also, would it even be a widely known fact?
  • The Jedi and the events around them are Shrouded in Myth, not pop culture icons in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. Just because they're super important to us doesn't mean they are to the in-universe population.
  • Never mind the tourists, how come a perfectly fine moisture farm got completely abandoned? You'd think they'd be a precious commodity, and Tatooinians would be abhorrent to wasting anything, especially real estate.
  • The homestead was burned last time it was shown. In any case, Luke would have inherited the property and it's unknown what he did with it.
  • The homestead in this movie looks a lot more stripped down. Seems like Luke either sold everything off, or someone looted the place and never claimed it. The place had been the site of at least two major attacks after all, once from the Sand People and once from the Empire. it would make sense if the locals just took everything of value not bolted down and avoided it.
  • For a planet covered in Jawas, that was a whole lot of usable, abandoned machinery that would have been scooped up in the last 30 years.
    • What's to say any of it is still usable? The Jawas may have stripped the equipment for parts, but left the shells due to the amount of work taking the whole thing would require. They had time, nobody lives there, so they may have just taken all the vital internals to sell.

Skywalkers don't like Tatooine

• So Rey burying Luke and Leia's lightsabers seems like a sweet gesture to lay to rest the Skywalker bloodline, but it doesn't make too much sense. Anakin was a slave on Tatooine, and always hated that planet. Luke famously called Tatooine the planet "furthest from the brightest center of the universe", and desperately wanted to leave. Leia barely set foot on Tatooine, and when she did, she was assaulted and humiliated by Jabba the Hutt. Burying the sabers on Tatooine feels like a fairly disrespectful gesture considering all this. It's possible Rey didn't realize what they thought about Tatooine, but it's still weird.
  • Well, where else? Alderaan is gone, and the Jedi planet doesn't bear happy memories for Luke either. On the other hand, happy or not, it was still the birthplace of both Anakin and Luke. Looks as good a place for to put them to rest as any.
  • It wasn't Luke's birthplace. He and Leia were born on Polis Massa. As to why Ben Kenobi chose Tatooine, well, that's a good headscratcher for another time.
  • Kenobi chose Tatooine to hide Luke as part of a hiding in plain sight. Also he knew Vader would never want to return to Tatooine, unless he absolutely had to, because of his hatred for the place.
  • Luke and Leia may have been born on Polis Massa, but neither ever returned to it after their births. Their connection to Polis Massa is even more obscure than their connection to Naboo, as people would know the latter if it was known that Padmé was Luke and Leia's mother. The only living person who would have known about Luke and Leia's place of birth, aside from any possibly still living Polis Massans who were present and possibly didn't know of the importance, is R2, and he might not consider it important. Tatooine meanwhile, is where both Luke and Anakin grew up and the specific spot were the lightsabers were buried is only a short distance away from where Anakin's mother Shmi is buried.
  • And she probably straight up just doesn't know about Naboo's connection to Luke and Leia; though even if she did, it's also got the same connection to Palpatine.
  • Also, it's a good place to hide the Lightsabers, to lay them to their final rest. It's not a place anyone would think to look, not a place anyone would just happen upon. It's her way of ending that story.
  • And in laying the sabers to rest at the site of the old moisture farm, she's proverbially uniting the Skywalker twins with the only other Skywalker who never succumbed to the Dark Side, and who'd been happy there with Lars: Shmi, the founder of the lineage and the grandmother they'd never met.

Translating the dagger

• Setting aside how wiping C3PO's memory turned to be a non-issue anyway, why was it an issue to begin with? Why couldn't the heroes simply use another protocol droid? It wasn't ever established that C3PO was somehow unique in the language department.
  • The prohibition against translating Sith text was the problem, not 3PO himself. Other protocol droids would have the same issue, and, more to the point, there weren't any others around and they were in a severe time crunch.
  • Why not find another protocol droid (no way it was impossible to find one) and perform the operation on him?
  • Again, time constraints. Also, 3PO may be more unique than you'd think, since he was around since the days of the Republic. He may have more data logged than other, newer models.
  • You’re also forgetting the order of events. They didn’t know that the operation would require wiping C-3PO’s memory until they were already on Kjimi. By that point, the dagger had already been lost (or so they thought) when Rey destroyed the transport ship. They can’t have another droid translate the message because the only message they have access to is in C-3PO’s memory.

No Sith translations

• What could possibly be the point of this prohibition in the first place? To ensure no-one can learn Sith philosophy or something? Were such texts really so common that they warranted a a drastic measure? And if that was their concern, why would C3PO know the language at all? It make sense if it was Palpatine ensuring that nobody could learn his secrets, but the Republic? Know your enemy, no?
  • To quote Joseph Reinemann, a sci-fi writer who opted to comment informally on this, "The galaxy is littered with Sith artifacts that are, for lack of a better term, haunted. And just about all of them have some kind of big showy treasure map to guide anyone looking to kick off the next era of darkness straight to them. At best, this results in some would-be Indiana Jones getting possessed by a fragment of Darth Nastius the Senile and starting a cult that's constantly harassing people at the local starport. At worst, it unleashes a metaphysical plague that turns an entire system's population into superpowered zombies." He's not wrong either given all the horrifying stuff we see various Sith artifacts doing in both Canon and Legends.
    • Cannot say anything for Legends, but in the movies that would be... what, exactly? In fact, what prominent Sith artefacts have there even been to base this assumption on? I think the dagger and the wayfinders are the first, and they didn't display any such malignant properties.
  • The Sith are, almost uniformly, evil. So the logic probably was that anything they felt they had to write down in their secret, evil language was probably not something the Republic would want to become common knowledge. Sorta how, for instance, the average librarian probably wouldn't stock the Anarchist Cookbook.
  • So why not remove the language from the droids' databanks completely?
  • Droids were viewed as tools by most people, so memory wipes were treated as no bigger an issue than clearing your browser history. The only issue is when you've developed an emotional attachment and haven't backed up your droid's memory recently.
  • If the Republic was concerned with the knowledge of Sith language, why not outlaw it period and demand that it is deleted from all droids' memories? Sure, determined individuals might be able to get them from black market, but it still seems to be a more reliable measure than a block that is one hack away from removing.
  • Electronic devices with computerized components generally have three levels: hardware, firmware, and software. An example of hardware interference on a droid would be a restraining bolt. If a memory wipe would remove the restriction, it was likely enacted at the software level. If a memory wipe doesn't remove C-3PO's ability to translate the language, that feature is likely enacted at the firmware level. Devices such as your cell phone or (if you still have one) mp3 player are designed so that you can "wipe them" and still start them up, because the "wipe" doesn't affect the firmware (usually flashed chips, or, at least, it used to be - which is why updating the firmware always carries a risk of "bricking" your device if the chip flashing process goes wrong).
  • It could be like in "Lord of the Rings" and the Black Speech of Mordor. People do know how to pronounce and translate it, like Gandalf, but because of the extreme evil associated with it they do not. It could easily be the same way with Sith speech and is implied it is. It is also similar to how their are real world words that exist but people are very hesitant to say because they are offensive and considered evil. Sith speech probably qualifies as this because by nature it is evil.
  • It's likely that the Sith language is itself steeped in the Dark Side. Look what happened to Threepio when he spoke it. In addition to his eyes turning red, his intonation and body posture were unlike anything we've seen from him. And the words themselves sounded like an incantation, and that was just instructions on how to find something! The fact that droids are programmed to understand but not speak the language suggests that the real fear is what would happen if the words are said out loud.
  • What was up with that by the way? Prejudice or genuine caution from the government is understandable, but Sith were originally just another species, whom the ancient Dark Jedi conquered. They apparently weren't the nicest people either, if the DJs ended up mingling with them and adopting their name and philosophy, but they weren't demons or anything, were they?
  • Remember that 3PO was created on Tatooine, a top candidate for crime capital of the galaxy. Possibly when Anakin built and programmed him in the first place, he incorporated a bootleg translation-app that didn't comply with Republic restrictions on language software. Later, when C-3PO left lawless Tatooine and took up service with Amidala's senatorial entourage, new strictures were added to his existing program to bar him from criminal conduct, including the use of his translation abilities to interpret Sith.
  • But not remove the language from his data bank altogether? Seems both overly-complex and ridiculously half-assed at the same time. Imagine the FBI found a laptop with an app that can hack Pentagon. And instead of deleting the app, destroying or storing the laptop in some vault, they just install a password on it. But hey, they make sure it's 8 chars at least, with numbers and special symbols!
    • Your analogy doesn't equate because it assumes the app only exists on this one laptop. Even if they erased Sith Language from all Droid databanks it would still be on all sorts of dangerous artifacts across the galaxy, as has been previously debated. If they had simply erased it, and some archaeologist had discovered one of such artifacts and had their protocol droid attempt to translate it only to discover that it didn't have records they would get excited, thinking they'ed rediscovered an ancient society so old it predates records, and become focused on the artifact, likely attempt to learn the language and potentially unwittingly unleashing a major threat on the galaxy. By contrast, if their protocol droid explains that the text is in an ancient Sith language that has been outlawed by the galactic republic, it would mean the ones with common sense and a moral code will realize that this is something dangerous, leave well enough alone and probably reach out to the Jedi to deal with it.
    • Ok, that makes sense, except for one aspect - you don't need to be able to translate the language just to know what it is. So sure, teach the droids how to recognise Sith letters of glyphs or whatever, but don't keep a translator available just one hack away!
    • "Language" and "alphabet" aren't the same thing. What if part of the text on the artifact in question is written in forbidden Sith words, but rendered in ordinary Aurebesh characters? Like, if a modern Sith-wannabe had previously tried to translate them and jotted down notes in contemporary script?

Kylo trying to run Rey over

• So, what was Kylo trying to do? He flew at her on the surface level, but didn't fire... wat? He wanted to kill her? Scare her? Impress her? Test her?
  • He outright says later that he was deliberately pushing her, so it seems he was trying to test her.
  • Pushing her into what? He wanted to turn her to his side, how does trying to run her over facilitate that? Not to mention that he could've easily died in that crash, even with all his powers.
  • Kylo didn't even suffer so much as a bruise from that crash, he clearly wasn't in any danger. Kylo was deliberately pushing Rey towards aggression and anger, in a bid to turn her to the Dark Side. Kylo was putting pressure on Rey in the hopes she'd lash out, and he succeeded.
  • Uhuh, because she went for the wing. If she sliced through the cockpit and his empty head, it could've gone quite differently. "pushing Rey towards aggression" - first, it was self-defence. Second, even if so, how would it benefit him? Turning to the Dark Side doesn't necessarily mean she will join him, does it? And seeing how both their previous encounters ended in her favor, you'd think a Rey with her moral restrictions removed and really pissed at him would've been the last thing Kylo would want.
  • Kylo Ren explicitly stated several times that he wanted to turn Rey to the dark side, and have her rule at his side. He doesn't want Rey dead, he wants her angry and pissed off because aggressive feelings are the easiest way to fall to the Dark Side. He's not going to get her angry and pissed off if he leaves her alone. He spends his time deliberately putting pressure on Rey to try and keep her unbalanced, but his goal is never to actually kill her— that would completely undermine his goal of getting Rey to "Take his hand".
  • Pushing her to the Dark Side makes sense. But Dark Siders do not automatically become best buddies. Quite the opposite, in fact. With Emperor and Luke it was very different - Palpatine (not without ground) thought he was in total control, so after killing his own father and witnessing the Rebellion's destruction Luke would have nothing left to do but to serve him, like Anakin had before. But Kylo didn't give Rey a single reason to join him and he had no reason to believe he'd be able to subdue her after she falls to the Dark Side!
  • Kylo believes Rey will join him if she gives in to the Dark Side because they have a close connection through the Force. He knows that she is tempted by the idea of ruling at his side.
  • First of all, it was revealed in TLJ that their connection was manufactured by Snoke to lure her in and get to Luke. So unless they've retconned that too, there's no reason why Rey should give a damn about it. If anything she should detest it. Also, when was it ever indicated she was tempted to rule by his side? She has rejected him the last time he offered her that! Also also, falling to the Dark Side is not like joining a political party - it means giving in to your hatred, unleashing all your anger and aggression. And Kylo is using himself as the focus for that hatred! How is she not going to murder him the moment she gives in? And even disregarding all that, it was still an insanely dangerous and potentially lethal trick, especially against a Jedi. Turning Rey to the Dark Side will not do him any good if he's dead!
  • Well Kylo hasn't been the brightest and most logical person around, even in the previous 2 films.
  • Turning Luke to the Dark Side would not have done Palpatine any good if Palpatine was dead, either, but that's apparently just how Dark Siders roll. As for him counting on surviving the wreck? The personal ship of the Supreme Leader probably has any number of safety features just in case they get shot down at high speed. Given he gets up and walks out of the wreck within minutes, apparently his ship had such features. Or he put himself in some kind of Force bubble to ride it out.
  • No, but, again, Palpatine felt himself in total control, and, well, he pretty much was. And with the way he staged the fall of both Anakin and Luke, he apparently expected their hatred to be directed mostly at themselves for the things he goaded them into doing, while remaining the sole focus of their affection. Vader's inner monologue even says that much in the Rot S novelization: "he could try to kill Sidious, but what's the point? The Emperor was the only thing he's got left". Kylo, on the other hand, does nothing but constantly piss Rey off!
  • The two shouldn't even be compared to. Palpatine was intelligent and cunning to the point where he was able to use a good guy façade without any problem and actually succeed in his galaxy-conquest goal. Kylo is not a real logical person as was said already, showing immaturity at many points and failing at galactic conquest or destroying the resistance.(His victory against Snoke was only done with Rey's indirect help.) Kylo likely saw this as a good idea at the time without much strategy. He isn't even close to Palpatine in terms of smarts or cunning.

The First Order captain token

• Ok, so the heroes have a FO captain ID. How did it help them infiltrate the Star Destroyer? This "captain" would still have a name and a post, which most certainly wouldn't be on a random ship that has just arrived to that system. He would still have to explain what his business is there, and why in Emperor's name is he flying a Correlian freighter which should have been, by that point, well known to every last Imperial grunt. It'd make sense that it could've passed some cursory custom inspection needed when escaping the planet, but this is another level entirely!
  • It's basically a keycard to automatically get through into the hangar. You did notice how they were accosted by Stormtroopers literally the instant they landed, right? All the token does is get them inside.
  • Yes, that's my point. Why would such a thing exist? It's a military ship. Random people, even members of your own military, aren't supposed to be able to enter unannounced and unchecked. At least in RotJ the infiltrators bothered to steal both the appropriate ship and the access codes.
  • It's intended for emergency use. "I, a high-ranking officer, have something important to do and I don't have time for the normal procedure." However, using it to land on a ship is still weird enough that the landing crew decided to send a large security force to check. If it had been a captain, they would have just let him go about his business. Note that Zorri was intending to use it to escape a blockade, which would have been quick enough that the First Order wouldn't have seen the need to send troops.

Magical quicksand

• The heroes sink in it and then... fall into a cave beneath. Huh? How is it possible that sand, which, as we all know, gets everywhere, didn't fill the cave? What was holding the cave ceiling intact, and how did it let the heroes in but not the sand?
  • It's possible that it isn't quicksand in the traditional sense, so much as something of a booby trap.
  • That would require some kind of force field with selective penetrability. Who would build such a super-advanced booby trap in the middle of the desert, guarding absolutely nothing, perfectly visible and distinct from the surrounding sand (how did Ochi even fell in? Did he crash his speeder in that exact point too?) and why?
  • It's a weird natural feature on an alien planet. Star Wars (and the stories it draws from) has been using the "weird natural feature acts as an obstacle the heroes couldn't have predicted" for years. In this case, it probably has something to do with the worm-creature that built the tunnels. Some sort of mucus membrane or whatever lets prey fall in but the sand seals up the hole behind them.
  • Possibly some sort of magnetic field or similar Force-magic-related phenomenon. Strong enough to hold up the grains of "sand" but not strong enough to hold up anything with more weight and/or only able to hold up something with other properties that the "sand" has but other stuff doesn't. As to why it would just happen to exist, the worm could have evolved to secrete the "sand" as a trap for prey because of a field that was already there.
  • Sinkholes under sand are a real phenomenon. On Earth, they can happen when drifting sand engulfs a stretch of forest, killing the trees. This leaves the buried roots to succumb to dry rot until they're so brittle, they'll collapse if you walk over them.

Why were they playing a boardgame at a time like that?

• At the beginning of the film, either the Falcon was actively being tailed by the First Order meaning the people on board would almost certainly be preoccupied with trying to shake them, or as established in the previous film, they'd be keeping watch for fighters to show up on the chance they were being tracked. And as it happens, the first order does show up not long after they reach their destination so it's likely both of those things were going on, and yet they're sitting around playing a game?
  • Weren't they in hyperspace at the time? You're safe in hyperspace, and have no reason not to spend your time on a game.
  • They're safe while in hyperspace yes, but the issue is more in that they would've known they could be followed, or if not that then the Force Order could be tracking them - given that enemy ships show up not long after they arrive on the planet, one or both of those was likely the case. Why wouldn't they be at their stations in case they were attacked once they got out of hyperspace?
  • They weren't going to fall out of hyperspace unexpectedly. They knew how much time they had, and they get up and go to their stations as the ship's coming out of hyperspace.

Why are the other Snokes disfigured in the same way as the first one?

• With it being confirmed that Snoke didn't always have the deformities he has, why do the clones have it? Is it a product of aging? And if it is, why would they clone a version of Snoke who's old, rather than his younger, presumably more physically able self?
  • Some Snokes may have been a little prettier before a) something terrible happened to a previous version and they cloned the new one as a matching, non-suspicious replacement b) they decided cut costs, or c) they went with a version that was more intimidating.
  • In the (as of now) current Kylo Ren comic, Ben comments to Snoke that Luke did something to him. It's ambiguous if he's talking about the disfigurement or something else. He could have always been disfigured, at least for as long as Ben/The First Order knew him.
  • Possibly they all degenerate in the same way. It might have been a result of his body being slowly corrupted by his use of the Dark Side. Perhaps this Snoke is merely the one with the longest delay in his degeneration.

Why doesn't Palpatine possess a Snoke instead?

• A Snoke clone would be powerful, custom made to his desires, and if what he says about controlling Snoke is true, completely beholden to his will, meaning the ceremony to transfer his consciousness would go off without a hitch. Why not just make the best, toughest and most powerful clone of Snoke obtainable, and become that instead?
  • The implication is that Palpatine was possessing clones, and that Snoke was just one flawed enough to look nothing like Palpatine. The vats have lots of clones, ranging the gamut from Snoke to Palpatine. Whether Snoke was independent-but-loyal or literally remote-piloted by Palpatine is unclear (probably the first one, but people have mentioned the second one).
  • More in terms of ritual for transferring his consciousness to another body, as he wanted to do with Rey. Why not do that with Snoke instead?
  • Snoke is just an artificial clone body, old and deformed, possibly cobbled together with a lesser lifespan and vitality. Given the choice between that and a young, strong, organically-made, ultra-Force-sensitive family member, Palpatine went with option B.
  • But Word of God is the Snoke was young once, implying Palpatine can just make another one who's young and able, then possess that one. Why not do that?
  • Same reason. It's an artificial body vs a fresh, organic granddaughter. If Rey became unavailable, Palpatine might be able to make himself a younger Snoke; Rey's just a much more appealing option while she's around. Even if Snokes can be manufactured young, they might have a drastically shorter lifespan, and there's no guarantee that they're as mobile or powerful as the real thing.
  • Snoke saw the rise and fall of the Empire, plus thirty years. Let's say he's about 50. 50 is a bit past prime for a human being, but with regular exercise a 50-year-old can still be in pretty good shape. Compare Snoke, who looks like he has about fifteen different lethal illnesses simultaneously and has flesh falling off his bones. Even when it reaches age 50, Rey's body sounds like a much better deal.
  • Another possibility: It's actually Palpatine's influence that causes the Snokes to degenerate.

What were the additional Snoke clones for?

• Making an army (besides the one he has), maybe? Or as reserves in case Kylo gets taken out as the leader of the First Order?
  • Rejects or spares, perhaps. Judging by the appearance of the successful version, the process is less than perfect.

Can Rey sense Chewie or not?

• How did she know he was alive and on the ship near Kijimi, but not know he wasn't on the ship she destroyed? You could make the argument that she could only sense him if she was trying to, but if that's the case then why would she not try to sense him in the ship she thought he was in, only to try to sense him while believing he was dead?
  • Possibly, when the ship blew, she wasn't thinking clearly. Couldn't focus her thoughts between her anger at Kylo, her grief at possibly having killed her friend, and her sheer terror of what she just did. On Kijimi, she's clear-headed, in a much better place, and thus, in tune with the Force.
  • It's referring to before that, when she was grabbing the ship.
  • Even still, at that point, she wasn't focused. She was running on anger, and panic, and pure ire at that point.
  • Sensing things with the Force has always been more art than science. Also, Rey was using a massive amount of power and concentration to stop the ship from moving, leaving none left to sense the occupants.

Why is a "dyad" required to absorb life energy?

• Isn't it just force healing, but in reverse? I.E. force healing (according to the movie itself) involves transferring your life energy to another being, and absorbing others' life energy is just the opposite of that, right? Shouldn't you be able to do that to anyone if you can do it at all?
  • A dyad is an especially powerful pair of Force users that feed into and support each other. Yes, Palpatine could have drained the life from anyone, and probably did, but that was a temporary solution. He got a lot more out of draining a dyad.
  • Then why not absorb the life energy of a steady supply of Snoke clones instead?
  • If the Snoke clones were puppets, they would not have any life energy of their own. If they are sentient clones, or as close to sentient as possible, their life force might already be corrupt and not of use to Palpatine.
  • Then why not specifically create Snokes that are as pure as possible? With the creation of the clone troopers it was established you can freely alter a person's nature in the cloning process, so couldn't he specifically create Snokes with the traits most conducive to forming a dyad?
  • The Clone Troopers were raised and indoctrinated as babies to be perfect soldiers and even then, they each had their own personalities and behaviors. Most likely it could not be possible to make a "pure" Snoke clone because whatever was used to clone or make him from (Palpatine himself, Plagueis) was already imperfect. For the clone troopers on Kamino Jango lived their to use him to harvest fresh DNA. Also the dyad is between light and dark and Snoke was only dark.

Would force healing have helped Palpatine?

• He needs life energy to regenerate, which force healing is established to use, so could he have just had someone heal him with the force instead of needing to drain someone's life energy? Could he create a version of Snoke capable of doing that and regenerate that way?
  • Maybe, but he could also just drain their life energy, or jump to a new clone, or a million other things. And in fact he was probably already doing those things. Remember Palpatine should be dead by old age at this point even if he hadn't been killed. He's clearly doing something to extend his lifespan.
  • Then why not just do it even more? Even with whatever measures he's taking he's a barely-alive old man on life support when by all these measures he doesn't need to be.
  • Force healing only seems to heal wounds. Solid examples are in the Mandalorian and in T Ro S, as well as many Legend EU materials. If anything, Palpatine draining their life energy is the Dark Side perversion of force healing. Instead of someone giving their life energy to heal another, he is taking life energy to heal himself. However, he'd still be an old man, just with his full power.

Was the Snoke we knew for most of the trilogy a clone too?

• Word of God is that he may actually have a past of his own, yet Palpatine says he "made" Snoke - although in that case he could have meant he molded Snoke into what he ultimately was, rather than having literally created him. But if the "original" Snoke was a clone, who/what was he cloned from?
  • Palpatine is the most obvious answer.
  • Why does he not look like Palpatine, then?
  • Maybe Plagueis, since no one other than Palpatine knew what Plagueis look like. Also it would not benefit Palpatine to make Snoke look like Palpatine. It would be too easy to tell Snoke=Palpatine if that were the case. And Snoke was known the Luke, Leia and Han at some point before all of this. If Snoke looked like Palpatine, that would let them know something is wrong.
  • This is only speculation, but he might be less a clone and more a totally synthesized organism. It's possible his DNA is patterned on someone else's broadly, but not a direct duplicate.

Palpatine's appearance

• Palpatine uses Rey and Ben's life force to restore himself from a corpse-like state to a healed body. But why didn't that undo the injuries to his face too? Why didn't he turn back into his Prequel-era appearance, or even turn back into a young man?
  • The original Legends novelization stated Palpatine's face always looked like that and the Sith lightning permanently destroyed the glamour. The newer canon stated any damage done by Sith lightning can't be undone. So any newer clones would carry the damage at time of the original's death. Another interpretation could be also after Palpatine was cloned, he simply continued to age until his looks caught up with him and that's what he would look like after 80+ years.
  • Sith lightning damage doesn't seem irreversible. If that were true, Luke would've been in constant pain after being severely electrocuted in Return of the Jedi. The theory that his friendly looking face was a mask still holds true.
  • Either way by this point Palpatine was over 80 years old. Unless he is a Skeksis, using life force can't reverse his age; only his body and power. He'd still be an old man either way.
  • What dafuq is a Skeksis?

Clone or Corpse?

• Was Palpatine in this movie an imperfect clone of his old self, or was this the same body he had throughout the prequels and original trilogy re-animated through unnatural Sith means? The film doesn't seem clear either way.
  • It seemed he was more imperfect clone. IIRC, he did mentioned he had "died before". It could be combination of imperfect clone with his soul infused using Sith magic.
  • Simplest answer: we don't know. The incredibly decrepit nature of his body (especially compared to the artificial Snoke, who could at least get around by himself) suggests that it's his original corpse reanimated, but it could well be a poorly-made clone.
  • To go with the "clone" theory: Palpatine mention he has died before, at the very least alluding to the fact he died on the Death Star 2. In a later scene, just after they confirm Palpatine is alive, Beaumont Kin mentions something about cloning and Sith sorcery. He is knowledgeable with Sith history. Summing it up, it seems Palpatine's current body is clone body created by Sith magic and science to infuse Palpatine's spirit in the clone body, and possible based on Palpatine's statement other Sith spirits. However, the creation process was most likely flawed resulting in why Palpatine looks corpse-like. So imperfect clone, reanimated using his soul/spirit.

All that time and effort for such little info?

• The tip that Finn and Poe acquire about Palpatine's return and plans isn't very detailed or different from what everyone already suspects is going on anyway - did they really need to travel to a specific planet, rendezvous with an informant, and transfer Data into R2 just to find that out? For that matter, why does it needed to be downloaded into R2 instead of just given to them on some sort of data storage device, so they could reproduced it at will without needing to consult a droid?
  • In fact didn't the start crawl say that Palpatine announced his return to the entire galaxy and even gave them an ultimatum with exact time before his attack? What exactly did the spy tell them what they didn't know already?
  • They learned from the informant that Palpatine is on Exegol. They may not have been able to get there, but it was at least an incredibly helpful starting point.
  • Why did they need to physically go somewhere to be told that, though? It's info that amounts to one sentence, if even that. It's not even like it mattered that they would've had to ensure the First Order doesn't find out they know where Palpatine is, because for one, they can't get there anyway, and for another, the First Order is following them anyway so the result is the same.
  • Physical data that needs to be fetched is a pretty common thing in this universe. Transmitting the data may not be safe, or transmission might be jammed. As for the actual info...knowing the location of your enemy's hidden base is pretty damn useful.
  • Why would they have been concerned about being jammed or intercepted when the First Order can just track their ship anyway? For that matter, if transmissions were too risky then how did they even know to go to that planet to pick up the transmission in the first place, or even know what they were going for? Did someone have to go to the Resistance and tell them? If that's the case then why not deliver the data to the Resistance rather than having them come to you?
  • You can ask questions all day about this and that, but we only know the circumstances as presented to us in the film, which were a) The Resistance got a tip from an informant, b) They had to go there to pick it up, meaning that the informant couldn't make it to them or risk transmitting the data, and c) Whatever transmission summoning the Falcon there was also picked up by the First Order, demonstrating why sending data is such a risk.
  • This makes no sense. In TLJ Holdo's plan was: "Go to Crait and call for help". And we were clearly supposed to regard this as a good and solid plan, even though "what if it gets intercepted" was an obvious and glaring issue with it. They cannot now turn around and say: "Oh no, it's absolutely impossible to transmit even a single sentence without the First Order intercepting or jamming it!" Had the Resistance no secure channels, cyphers or anything like that? Hell, how do they even survive this long, if they cannot send or receive a single untraced message?
  • They're not saying that. Nobody was saying that. Just because an outside informant doesn't want to risk it doesn't mean that it's "absolutely impossible," it just means that the informant didn't want to risk it. You asked a question, you got an answer.
  • That still doesn't answer how they knew where they were supposed to go and yet didn't already have the info anyway. Either the informant did risk getting found out by sending them a transmission to come meet him, or the informant sent someone to the base to tell them where to go, meaning the info could have been delivered by hand anyway.
  • ^That, and also, they've never heard of pre-recorded messages? Automated transmitters? Dead drops?
  • There's any number of ways they could have been alerted to one, but not the other. Apparently, the informant considered the risk of "Hey, I have some info for the Resistance" getting intercepted worth it, but the risk of, "I know where Palpatine is and that there's a traitor in the First Order," getting intercepted was not. For one thing, there's probably a number of people feeding the Resistance information and other forms of aid, so one more message of, "Hey, I have some info," might not be flagged even if the First Order caught it. A specific message of actionable intel, however, is definitely going to be flagged. So the informant gambled and lost; that doesn't make him an idiot.
  • Then why not transmit the information from somewhere else, and then flee so the First Order doesn't find your actual base of operations? That way you can tell the heroes anything you want and even if the First Order does look into it, it won't compromise your whole operation. For that matter you wouldn't even have to send the transmission yourself; just have a droid do it while you get out of dodge before the First Order even catches wind of what's being done.
  • Because at some point, making absolutely certain that there's no possibility whatsoever of taking any consequences for delivering the message gets in the way of actually delivering the message. Transmit the information from somewhere else? Maybe he doesn't have equipment that can move "somewhere else." Just have a droid do it? What if the droid malfunctions or gets captured before it does? The point is, the guy's main concern was getting the information to the heroes, not making sure that it was completely, utterly impossible for anyone to have ever traced it back to him. The information is also time sensitive — if he takes a week rigging up a mobile transmission center and a droid to operate it, then whoops! Palpatine has destroyed the galaxy already.
  • Not having easily transportable equipment is actually understandable given we don't know how extensive their resources are, but if they need contingencies for droids, why not just bring more than one just in case? If they can set up a working base at all they almost certainly have multiple droids handy. Regardless, if indeed the priority is delivering the message quickly then the question is again; why not just have it delivered to the heroes by the same means by which they were told to come meet him? And if the concern was then that the First Order would hear about it and investigate, evacuate (and maybe even destroy) the base after sending this info. Sure the precaution of abandoning a whole base might be extreme for one piece of info, but given it's info that could (and did) win them the war, it'd be worth it in the long run. Especially given the First Order finds the base by tailing the Falcon anyway, something else they should have considered as a possible drawback since they know their ships can and will be tracked.

Sith Fleet vs. Starkiller Base

• Since both projects most certainly had to have taken years, if not decades, to complete, and both were completed just a year apart from each other, it means both were being constructed more or less simultaneously. Except, why would Palpatine bother with an immobile, vulnerable and grossly overpowered Starkiller, when he already had the far more superior fleet in the works? Hell, many of those ships had to have been already completed by the time of FA!
  • At the time, most of the First Order did not know Palpatine was alive. They were formed in the first place after his death as part of his Contingency. His fleet of Star Destroyers were built in secret from the First Order, to later be manned by them after he announced his return. The First Order building Starkiller Base was most likely their own way of doing things. Also even if he knew of both, depending how much control over Snoke he had, Starkiller base still operated as a show of force against the Republic since it destroyed Hosnian Prime. Additionally, as Fallen Order shows, the Empire had already been excavating Illum, which means the Empire started to build the outset of Starkiller Base long before the First Order actually did.
  • Another point to consider is the difference in purpose. Starkiller base is largely meant as a symbol of terror and oppression by putting a gun to the heads of every single life in the Galaxy, even though it had limitations. The Sith Fleet was meant as a symbolic resurrection of the Galactic Empire, to crush spirits by reminding them of just who they were up against.
  • Could the fleet not have fulfilled both? Terror, oppression, show of force, gun to the head, all with no limitations, safe from being laid low by a single craven officer. And why keep the fleet secret from the First Order, forcing them to waste vast resources on the Starkiller? Again, the fleet had to have taken years to build, meaning it had to have been at least partially ready by the time of FA, and probably would'e been ready long before that, had they concentrated on it. The Order was competent enough to keep the Starkiller secret (or the New Republic was too inept to find out), what's the difference? And why wouldn't he have complete control over Snoke if he'd make him, or at least his cooperation? And why even reveal the location of Exegol to anyone, except Snoke? Why announce his return at all or at least why not wait with it until after the fleet is deployed and the galaxy is brought to heel?
  • Overconfidence answers several of the questions here. But as was said before, the First Order built the Starkiller Base, not Palpatine. That or the fleet is just one of his backups.

What exactly happens when the Holdo Maneuver doesn't work?

• While they say it's really unlikely to work, they never explain what happens when it doesn't. Maybe the attacking ship just "no-clips" through the target while in hyperspace without harming it?
  • It's probably a matter of variables: angle of strike, shields up versus shields down, relative mass of the ships, etc. Plus, the only ship they have of any real mass is the Tantive IV, which is essentially their command ship, which they can't afford to lose.
  • The attacking ship is vaporized against the defending ship's shields.
  • What if it doesn't have any shields?
  • Hyperspace is shown to completely bypass shields in Force Awakens.
  • Yes, if you do the maneuver correctly it bypasses shields. Doing it wrong probably has multiple possible outcomes: Either you no-clip through them with no harm to either side, you slam into them and vaporize on their shields without doing real damage, or they just dodge and both sides live. Not to mention what happens if they have an interdictor on hand, in which case you can't jump to hyperspace at all and nothing happens.
  • Nothing about doing it "correctly", hyperspace always bypasses shields. The danger of Han's maneuvre in Force Awakens was that he had to jump out of hyperspace in the very small gap between the shields and the planet surface, at the risk of missing and going hypersplat on the planet. During the Holdo maneuvre, you never jump out of hyperspace, so you're never at risk of being affected by shields.
  • Where is it stated aways? It was possible to bypass Starkiller Base's as "Their shields have a fractional refresh rate", we don't know if other shields have this weakness (its main weapon fires though hyperspace so there's reason for it to allow such to bypass it). And maybe it was only possible because the Millennium Falcon is the fastest ship and anything slower couldn't get through those openings in time, hence why this wasn't seen nor attempted before.
  • At the end of Rogue One you can see several Rebel ships about to go to lightspeed get splattered across the front of Vader's Star Destroyer like bugs on a windshield when it suddenly appears in front of them.
  • Those ships were only about to go into hyperspace, but they hadn't made the jump yet. They splattered while they were still lining up in normal space and the SD popped up in front of them and advanced.
  • Which suggests that timing is an important issue in successfully performing a "Holdo". Perhaps you have to hit your target at just the exact moment when you make the jump. Any earlier and it's a normal collision. Any later and you're already fully in hyperspace when you reach their real space position and you miss them entirely.

Jannah, no relation.

• Were they playing up a relation between Finn and Jannah? Felt like we were going to get a sister/brother reveal or something. Their conversation about the Force definitely felt like a big sibling talking to a younger one. (There was also that thing with Lando at the end, but he was always a flirt if he found time for it.)
  • Finn and Jannah were both former Stormtroopers who rebelled; that's the whole reason they had a connection. Since they were all taken as children, you could sort of say they were 'brother and sister', or at least had very similar childhoods being raised by the First Order.
  • Actually, the rumour is that until quite late before shooting, the script had Lando joining because his daughter was one of the children taken by the First Order, and the ending was going to strongly imply it was Jannah. So she may well be related to a main character, but not Finn. Unfortunately, all that's left of that is one moment in the finale where they bond for a second (which then sort of fell into Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading territory by default, since many people assumed he was flirting with someone a third of his age.)

Why bury the lightsabers?

• Not a plot hole or anything, but is there a particularly strong reason that Rey travelled all the way to Tatooine to shove Luke and Leia's lightsabers in the ground? These are incredibly rare and powerful weapons, sacred artifacts and precious mementos. Keep them safe, by all means, but there's no reason beyond pithy false sentiment to be burying them underground. If Rey's own saber is damaged, or she needs to train new students, it's going to be a heck of a trek to get them back.
  • As an aside, shoving something so useful and valuable in the ground is an already a weird way to honour a person's memory when there are so many other options, but it goes triple in this instance. Anakin never lived at that homestead, while the next owner of the lightsaber, Luke, lost a hand while dueling with it and later tossed it off a cliff. Meanwhile, Leia only used her lightsaber for a very brief time during training and abandoned it for the rest of her life, so Rey is essentially burying an object that meant very little to a person outside a place they also never lived.
  • A lightsaber is created by each Jedi and is, per Obi-Wan, their life. Rey buried the lightsabers to honor the Leia and Luke's memories and to make sure they could not be used by anyone potentially unworthy. It is also symbolic because as the weapon is their "life" she is essentially burying them since they don't have physical bodies anymore. Depending on how things proceed, she could always exhume them to pass them on or they could be found by scavengers eventually and play a role in future movies. But unless the person is worthy, Rey giving them to anyone would tarnish the significance of the lightsaber and the person attached to it.

Where did all the people who comprise the Final Order come from?

• Exegol is a planet known about by so few people most don't even know it exists, yet Palpatine seems to have enough people on standby to build and maintain an army of Star Destroyers. Who are those people and how are they even there?
  • They're the Sith Eternal, a cult dedicated to the Sith. It's not really explained, but presumably they've been hiding on Exegol all these years. The Star Destroyers are also of the old Empire design, so presumably they retreated when the Empire fell and they've been modified over the last few decades.
    • This still doesn't explain how the Final Order was able to build this massive fleet. There's no sign of any shipbuilding facilities on Exegol, and a Star Destroyer isn't something you can just build by hand regardless of how many people you have in your cult. How could Exegol possibly have the resources to build a fleet of doomsday weapons?
    • It's a planet. Of which we only see a tiny portion. Remember how in Lo TR the characters wonder how could the barren land of Mordor possibly sustain such a large army, and then there was a note stating simply that, big shock, it's not all barren, and has arable lands and developed agriculture elsewhere? Now extrapolate that to the planetary scale. Exegol could've had a billion-large population and continent-spanning production facilities, and it still would've been entirely plausible that we simply weren't shown them. Also, judging by how harsh what little surface we saw was, perhaps all the infrastructure was subterranian, which would explain Palps lifting the ships from underground. Same goes for resources. Even barring outside supplies (and why not), it still has a literal planet-full of natural resources, all of which would be committed to the ship-building.
    • Most of that makes sense, but it's been established in Star Wars through numerous sources that simply having a planet is nowhere near enough to be able to build ships, let alone a fleet. Even if Exegol conveniently had all the right raw resources, you need all kinds of special-built faccilities to actually turn those into machines.
  • In Rogue One, Darth Vader has not just Royal Guards in his Mustafar citadel, but also what looks like a black-robed individual who may be a servant of some sort. My guess is Palpatine started the Sith Eternal cult not long after the Empire was formed from the Republic, Vader knew about the cult, and they did evacuate before Operation Cinder took place. Inferno Squad were sent to Vardos to retrieve Protectorate Gleb, who said she was the only one?
  • At the beginning when Sidious raises the Final Order fleet the Star Destroyers are noticeably dark. As in, they are not at full power and are not manned yet. Until Kylo Ren shows the First Order how to get to Exegol, the fleet is just there, not fully operational. Later on the First Order begins using some destroyers. In the final battle, many of the background destroyers were still dark, again as in not in use, meaning they were not fully staffed or powered up. Most likely, the First Order came, began manning and powering up the Final Order fleet for basic operational use, but even they did not have enough people to operate the entire fleet.
  • So, in the prior decades they didn't have time or personnel to man even a single ship, despite all those cultists, and yet Palpatine was planning to launch an all-out offence in just 16 hours? I'm not sure that is enough to even transfer all those thousands of people, let alone take control of the ships, even of similar class, test them and move out. On the other hand, in the end we see S Ds being shot down all around the galaxy, but what were they even doing there? Shouldn't they all have been recalled to Exegol to transfer the crews?
  • There is no reason to assume that they did all the preparations in 16 hours. The idea is absurd, so the clear and obvious answer here is that 16 hours is just when the heroes found out about it.
  • Indeed there isn't and they obviously didn't. And yet this is the time until the attack given by Palpatine in his ultimatum in the beginning of the movie. At least Poe says so. Not sure where he (or their contact, or Hux) gets it from - Palpatine's broadcast from the Fortnite tie-in doesn't say anything about 16 hours. Anyway, if you were right, and this was just accidentally the time when the heroes learned of the fleet, then why aren't the ships manned or deployed yet?
• To answer this and other questions related to the origins of the Final Order, from the film and tie-in comics, the best we can extrapolate the whole Exegol scenario to be is:

1. The Sith Eternal fleet, and ruling by holding each planet in the galaxy at gunpoint, was Palpatine's plan from the start. The Death stars were just prototypes.2. He began the R&D and construction of the Sith Eternal fleet at Exegol while still Emporer. It was either his contingency plan, or he'd have revealed it eventually had he not died.3. When he did die, he possessed his new body on Exegol. He ordered the Empire to retreat from the galaxy. Part of it he had form the First Order, part of it would bring their resources and manpower to Exegol.4. Starting when he was Emporer, and continuing afterwards, he recruited the most powerful corporate leaders to his Sith Cult. They would work together to covertly provide the further resources, manpower and research to the Exegol project, right under the New Republic's nose.5. He created Snoke and had him take over the First Order, which was partly controlled by people in on his scheme from the start. The First Order would destroy the New Republic, paving the way for his proper return.6. By the time of this film, he's strong enough to return, and his plan is exactly what it looks like: possess Rey and rule unchallenged by holding the whole galaxy at gunpoint.This entire scheme is laden with Fridge Logic and continuity errors, and from a storytelling standpoint, I'd call it ill-advised, but laying it out like this, it's at least A to B.

Kylo doesn't recognize his own quarters?

• So apparently the room on the ship specifically built for him isn't enough of a giveaway as to where Rey is? Does he barely spend any time in there, despite it being the place where he puts all the things he cares about?
  • He can only perceive Rey through the force, not her surroundings. He couldn't see the festival beforehand but figured out where she was by grabbing the necklace. So he cannot see the room, only what she interacts with. And once she does interact with something he recognizes he figures it out instantly.
  • But she's interacting with the floor, right?
  • The movie is pretty clear about what they see and don't see. They have a clear image of each other, and anything that they're wearing or carrying, and some times they teleport around small objects that are in contact with them. Ben has no clue about where Rey is, until their fight leads to the Vader helmet being teleported.
    • One of the very first lines in the very first Force bond scenes is Ren saying, "Can you see my surroundings? I only see you."
  • Rey is very clearly holding the Sith dagger in that entire fight scene, so Kylo should have known she had been to his quarters. It was only after the Vader helmet comes into his view that he realizes she is still there.

But Hux, what about the cameras?

• How could Hux possibly think he can cover up that he helped the heroes escape on a ship that - as they comment on - has cameras everywhere? Were Finn and Poe taken to an area of the ship with no cameras to be executed? Why?
  • Given Pryde's body language and how quickly he shoots Hux, odds are that they had reviewed the camera footage, knew what had happened, and were just toying with him before his execution.
  • So... Hux was just stupid?
  • Hux was a high ranking First Order officer, chances are he could erase the camera footage or alter them - similar to what Phasma did to Starkiller Base records in her comic. Pryde figuring out he was the spy was probably down to Hux's story not making sense or him being shot in the leg - when any sane rebel would shoot him in the arm so he couldn't fire a blaster.
  • When would he have had time to do that before being found out, though? We know from earlier in the movie that the cameras are being watched in real time (otherwise why would knocking out the cameras like Rey & co. did matter?) meaning that anything Hux does on camera has already been seen even if he deletes it later.

Won't taking out the cameras draw suspicion anyway?

• If the cameras on your ship seem to go out in sequence after a ship you don't recognize lands on your ship, isn't that a red flag even if you don't see who/what is doing it? Why did they think that would maintain their cover?
  • The idea was to hide who was running around on the ship. There would be a different response to "Someone just shot the cameras" versus "FN 2187, the Jedi girl, and that jackass who blew up our dreadnought are on Deck 7".
  • No, it really wouldn't. It's intruders, who cares who they are, we can figure it out after we identify their corpses. On the contrary, they may or may not immediately see them on cameras. But if the cameras go out, that's an instant red flag.
  • You'd care who they are so you know how to counter them. If you could send a squad of troopers or have to wait for Kylo Ren, for instance. And numbers. Denying your enemy information about who you are and what you're doing is always useful. And a camera going out is a red flag, but not necessarily for what. A camera going out could mean intruders, it could also meant a short in the wiring.
  • A camera at a random time - maybe. Numerous cameras being visibly shot one after another - unlikely. On the contrary, it's the dumbest thing one could do in such situation as you are a) flagging your exact location and b) identifying yourself as the enemy. Obviously nobody is going to wait for Kylo - or rather they'll notify him and then send all the available troops to intercept. What was stopping them from doing the smart thing: use the Force trick on the welcoming stormtroopers, maybe lure them into the Falcon, incapacitate and steal their armor, you know the drill, they've done it, like 4 or 5 times before, always more or less successfully.
  • Time, probably. They're not exactly hiding the Falcon, after all, and in the 10 minutes it takes to strip down the troopers and put the armor on, they could be surrounded already. And again, even if blowing up all the cameras gives away that there are intruders, you can at least hide your numbers, identity and what you're up to. Denying information to your enemy is always a good thing to do.
  • They weren't exactly hiding the Falcon on the Death Star or the Rogue-1 on Scarif either. Somehow they had time to subdue and strip the enemies and put on disguises. They would've had here as well if instead of shooting those first two troopers Rey'd forced (or Forced) them to report that all is fine and that the "captain" is coming in for a report. Also, good thing that there wasn't a single camera in the hangar or in any of the initial corridors they ran through before they suddenly decided to shoot the cameras down. Which, accidentally, is right before scores of stormtroopers started converging on their position. It is almost as if blowing the cameras did exactly the opposite of hiding them and, in fact, put the crew on high alert and prompted an overwhelming response, which made obscuring their numbers and identities completely meaningless!
  • The situations in the Death Star and on Scarif were very different — in the first movie, the Death Star pulled the Falcon in, and on Scarif it was a stolen Imperial ship. In both situations, the ships were "supposed" to be there, so there was no need to hide them, and therefore they had time to do those plans. In this, they don't — they're immediately accosted by stormtroopers wondering what they're doing there, and they have to act fast. Was it a perfect plan? Of course not, they were running by the seats of their pants. But that doesn't make what they did stupid.
  • They were not accosted They came under a guise of a FO captain, remember? Those stormtroopers came to welcome the "captain", learn of his business and escort him to Hux or Pryde or whomever. If they were suspicious of it, they simply wouldn't have let it inside. Also, in both other cases a crew instantly went in - to scan the ship in NH and to inspect the supposed cargo in RO. It doesn't look much different from what happened here. Hell, in RO it was much worse - they didn't have a jedi with them to subdue the inspectors quietly, and still they managed to do it.
  • Removing the cameras from play adds an element of unknown to the equation. While its true that they will know someone is shoting them right away they have no idea what they are doing and can only guess at their location. The intruders can backtrack or split into groups.
  • In The Mandalorian, the main characters are infiltrating an old Empire base where destroying the cameras just causes the guy viewing the feed to think it's a glitch in the system. So there's precedent, in-universe, for them to see the cameras go out and not immediately conclude it's an intruder.
    • Unless it's a deliberate in-joke like with stormtroopers' abysmal marksmanship, repeating another movie's nonsensical move is hardly a valid excuse. As for "adding the element of unknown" - I think even the imperials will realise that the most likely location of the intruders is the location of the last destroyed camera, and they don't need to know their exact location to order a ship-wide alert and lockdown. The main issue is that the heroes had a perfectly good alternative in taking armor off the welcoming stormtroopers and using it as a disguise.

Can't 3 PO just be vague?

• He can't tell them where the wayfinder is, sure, but he can tell them where the wreckage of the Death Star is - or if it's common knowledge then he could probably just mention the wreckage itself, and the heroes could infer that the wayfinder is there from that implication.
  • Given that he was even programmed in the first place not translate an "evil" language, and given that in Return of the Jedi 3PO apparently has such specific programming limitations as "never impersonate a deity," no doubt the devs that programmed him wouldn't allow loopholes like this.
  • It's possible he COULD have done that, but C-3PO is not programmed for creativity. Maybe the thought even occurred to him as he was about to be wiped, he did say he had "another idea."
  • When you think about it, there are a lot of alternatives C 3 PO could have done to relay the information. He could simply enter the coordinates into a computer, or simply point to the location on a star map. Both of those things wouldn't require him to say anything.
  • Was there any way of knowing that the dagger pointed to the ruins of the Death Star just from what was written on it? It said it was a moon in the Endor system, but I don't think any of the heroes could've expected to find such intact ruins there. Beyond that, the dagger contained such specific information as the location and direction you needed to view the ruins from and that the dagger itself was key to pinpointing the exact hiding place of the wayfinder. Without the direct translation, they wouldn't have been able to find it in time.

The Wayfinder (and the clue) staying in one place

• The Death Star wreckage is falling apart and being bombarded by harsh waves, yet the assumption is that the wayfinder will be in the same location forever? Why? This is especially contrived given that the dagger pointing you in the right direction is directly dependent on a specific piece of the Death Star that may have fallen over, broken, or worn away until becoming unrecognizable over the years.
  • It really shouldn't especially depending on when the dagger was made. But at the very least the Wayfinder itself was secured in what was Palpatine's throne room, so at least it was safe there. As for the wreckage moving or being worn away, most likely the Death Star was made with a lot of durability so it would not be worn away by water damage. And the wreckage itself was above the waves so it wasn't going to be moved and seemed to be largely immobile.
  • Assuming it doesn't get looted in the intermittent 30 years. That's a lot of metal just lying around.
  • The saving grace for not getting looted is the wayfinder was secured and could only be accessed using the dagger. I'd think Palpatine would have had enough security and potential traps for anyone trying to scavenge that particular area if they didn't have the right way of getting in.
  • The dagger only led to the planet and indicated the part of the debris to search - Rey didn't use it as a key or anything, so nothing prevented some enterprising scavenger from stumbling on the wayfinder by chance.
  • Even so, the wreckage seemed like it wasn't moving or being destroyed by the water. At least the wayfinder would be in that location in theory. And even without a specific key, Sidious probably booby trapped it so not just anyone could find it. At the same time though, it seemed no one really ventured out to the Death Star wreckage because 1) no one really seemed to know it was there, except the people that lived there and they seemed scared by it and 2) even if they did, no one knew the wayfinder existed in the first place.

Rey's staff and its significance

• This one is more of a meta question. Movies love the rules of three: Show something, remind the audience it exists later and then actually use it. In this movie it is established in Rey's first scene she is more comfortable with her staff than with her lightsaber. She prominently carries her staff with her wherever she goes. Later on Evil Rey fights with a lightsaber staff. So why did they establish this so hard without using it somewhere? Even in the end where it would've been a cool "Oh, she build a lightsaber that looks like a staff!" moment there's just...nothing. No moment where she leaves her staff to show she has left that part of her behind, no moment showing she used her staff as part of her lightsaber (though there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment where the top of her hilt looks a bit like her staff)...
  • It really is just a long pipe she carries around for practical reasons, with no backstory or significance. Not everything needs deeper meaning. The fact that she pulled apart her staff to make the lightsaber is just a 'huh' moment and nothing more.
    • I think it's quietly significant, showing that Rey has both let go of the past (no longer carrying her staff), but that her past is also still a part of her (parts used in constructing her Lightsaber). A way of showing that she's changed from the person she was, but carries that past with her into her future.

Why do Rey and Kylo start fighting on Kef Bir?

• Why did Rey and Kylo fight, on the remains of the Death Star? None of them wants to kill the other. None of them has reason to believe the other wants to kill him/her. IIRC, the previous dialogue between them, Kylo even said he reached out his hand to her, and wanted to do it again. They fought in Kijimi, but that was because he wanted to capture her, and she wanted to escape him and his guards. This was a totally different situation. The Palpatine asking him to kill her also doesn't work, as his intentions on not going through with that plan were more than evident. So...why? What was the point of the fight? What were the character's motivations? What was at stake for them, that they resorted to murder?
  • Rey is utterly livid at Kylo destroying the Wayfinder and attacks in anger, which is exactly what Kylo wants: for her to give in to the Dark Side. She's enraged, he's egging her on, with the whole Palpatine connection/Force lightning incident helping to push her closer to the edge. The fight make it pretty clear that Rey is not herself, screaming at Finn and stabbing Kylo while he's distracted, the latter of which brings her back to her senses as she realises she's gone too far.
  • And his plan in case she zaps him with lightning was?..
  • Who knows? That we don't know every contingency he has for any possible move she might make is not really relevant to the question.
  • That we don't know - isn't. That we, or anyone in this galaxy or the far-far away one, cannot for the love of life conceive what it could have possibly been, is. I've said it elsewhere, I'll say it here - falling to the dark side isn't like joining a party, even a nazi party, or falling under a mind control spell - it means simply giving in to your worst impulses and throwing all compassion, morals and, optionally, reason to the wind. So let's say Kylo succeeds in that. And Then What?? He has nothing to offer her, like Palpatine had with Anakin. He has no mean of safely subduing her, like Palpatine had with Luke. Yes, it seemed like he was getting an upper hand in that fight, so maybe he could've killed her, but that didn't seem to be his intention either.
  • We already know that you can block Force lightning either with a lightsaber — as Rey does, and as Obi-Wan and Mace Windu have done in the past — or with superior knowledge and ability with the Force, as Yoda does. So saying anybody "in this galaxy or the far-far away one, cannot for the love of life conceive what it could have possibly been" is inaccurate hyperbole, bordering on straight up complaining. He does have something to offer her (or at least he thinks he does): A place and companionship. Means of safely subduing her? He's still a better trained fighter than her, and can disarm her, literally if need be, without killing her.
  • Companionship? She hates his guts. And he does absolutely nothing throughout the movie to alleviate the sentiment or predispose her to him, only pissing her off further. "disarm her, literally if need be" - except he apparently wants her help in defeating Palpatine. So, at the very best, he would have himself a crippled/captured Dark Jedi who absolutely hates him and whom he's supposed to kill, not capture or cripple, to fulfill his deal with Palpatine. So yes, his hypothetical "contingency plan" is very relevant to the question, and how was it supposed to work?
  • "Hates his guts," which is why she spends half the previous movie trying to redeem him, immediately feels guilt when she stabs him in this one, and kisses him later, right? And more to the point, from his point of view he's offering that regardless of whether she reciprocates. He's allowed to be wrong about things — characters are allowed to take actions and do things without the benefit of out-of-universe knowledge and hindsight. Just like, you know, every single human who's ever lived did. And, again, we've seen several Jedi defend against force lightning, so it is absolutely not this inconceivably insurmountable thing you're trying to make it out to be. And this is a setting where robot hands are all over the place and reliable, so you are seriously overplaying how "crippled" Rey would be. Or did Luke lose all value when his hand was lopped off? The initial questions have been answered; at this point, it's just complaining.
  • She spends one scene, or rather she asks him to come back to the Light Side, he says no, the issue is dropped, and the movie ends with her literally and figuratively slamming a door in his face. At no time up to this point in Ep 9 does she show a single shred of affection for him. Feeling guilty and kissing happens much later, so it's not relevant. So no, this isn't hindsight or out-of-universe knowledge - this is what Kylo can realistically assume. Which is that she hates him, and turning her, even if at all possible, will most likely take effort and time he doesn't have, since, again, he's supposed to kill her. So, let's say he succeeds. She's given in to her hatred and anger, all currently directed at him, so she has absolutely no desire to cooperate. And maybe he had to also cripple her to subdue her, so now he has to heal her as well. And meanwhile Grandpa Palpi is calling and asking why is she not dead yet. What's the next move? We've seen that Kylo can be composed, quick-thinking and calculating when he needs to be, like when he tricked Snoke.
  • "One scene," so we're ignoring the numerous interactions they have throughout the whole of The Last Jedi that are clearly setting up bonding moments between them? We're also ignoring how she outright tells him in this movie that she "wanted Ben" to take her hand? When it's clearly something that she's been thinking about? Once again, this is a gross oversimplification and outright ignoring the text of the film for the sake of complaining. Kylo Ren is a mess of emotions and irrationality throughout the movies. Acting like he's some super-composed chessmaster throughout who knows what Rey's thinking and feeling just plain does not track with the movie. Also, Palpatine didn't seem too put out when Rey shows up, so the premise that Kylo has to kill her or else Palpatine will be angry is, again, directly contradicted with the things we see directly in the movie. This is, once again, nothing but a bunch of flimsy complaining.

Not being able to translate Sith

• Why would 3PO not be allowed to do that?
  • There's a quick line about the Senate having banned it at some point. This makes sense to a point, the Republic would want to outlaw all artefacts and tongues originating from their mortal enemy after they and the Jedi wiped them out to just two back in Bane's time. However, there's a difference between wanting to use information like that as a weapon which would corrupt the user in the ways of the Sith, and as a useful tool which could be used against the Sith (as it was in this movie). So this might be another example of the galactic government being too bureaucratic and safe rather than practical.
  • To quote Joseph Reinemann, a sci-fi writer who opted to comment informally on this, "The galaxy is littered with Sith artifacts that are, for lack of a better term, haunted. And just about all of them have some kind of big showy treasure map to guide anyone looking to kick off the next era of darkness straight to them. At best, this results in some would-be Indiana Jones getting possessed by a fragment of Darth Nastius the Senile and starting a cult that's constantly harassing people at the local starport. At worst, it unleashes a metaphysical plague that turns an entire system's population into superpowered zombies." He's not wrong either given all the horrifying stuff we see various Sith artifacts doing in both Canon and Legends.

Sith martial arts

• In the first minute of the movie, we see Ren fighting along with his stormtroopers to try and track down the Sith artefact against some natives of a planet. In one slow-mo shot, we see him throwing an enemy "hands-on" (as opposed to with force powers) by slamming the guy with his hand, which is also holding his lightsaber. However, you would have thought that the saber's energy would just cut through the enemy where it's in contact with him, right? Which would disrupt the whole action of throwing him ala jiu-jitsu.
  • Lightsabers don't just cut through every substance in the universe like a hot knife through butter. Either the cultist was wearing energy-resistant armour (Durasteel, Beskar etc.) or its species has a naturally tougher hide that meant Kylo could slam it to the ground while only half slicing through its body.
  • It looked like Kylo stabbed the guy with the saber's mini side blades, and used his arm and the sword's hilt to shove him. In other words, the main blade didn't touch the guy in any significant way.

All Siths live within Palpatine

• The idea that Sith's succession involved the Masters transferring their spirit to the Apprentice and thus "all Siths live on" is out of nowhere at best and straight up Continuity Snarl at worst.
  1. In Clone War season 6, Yoda actually visited the spirit of Darth Bane, founder of the Two Sith and his spirit independently spoke to Yoda. Going by what happened here, it should not be possible.
  2. The old Darth Bane Trilogy which despite being declared Legends, was still acknowledged in Broad Strokes by the Clone Wars. The Rule of Two described there was a philosophy emphasized evolution not a literal spirit transference ritual. In fact, Bane tried to possessed his Apprentice and was soundly beaten.
  3. Palpatine implies that had Rey strike him down, he would be reborn, not just that Rey would get his power. This implies that the Master's spirit could usurped control of the Apprentice's mind. However, Siths are a bunch of egotistical pricks, if this is the norm, they would take precautions to prevent this kind of takeover.
  4. If all Sith Master can live on within the newest Sith, would Plagueis be so obsessed with immortality and the secret of life?
  • Palpatine's power is incredibly similar to the Sith Inquisitor's ability to force Sith spirits to empower him. So perhaps the only way to Hand wave this without creating more contradictions is this: Palpatine also learned spirit binding and hunted down previous Sith's tomb to absorbed their spirit and empowered himself.
  • It was clearly a ritual of some kind, more than just "any Sith can possess any Dark Sider who strikes them down." As noted, similar things have shown up in Legends, but nowhere was it implied that it was automatic.
  • Also, he may not be speaking entirely literally. It may be less a matter of all the souls of the Sith living inside him, and more a case of him being the culmination of the ideal of "Sith".

What exactly are the Knights of Ren's orders?

• On the one hand, we're told that Kylo Ren is the "master" of the Knights of Ren; also, it's very heavily hinted that they're (at least in part) composed by some of the students Ben took with him when he destroyed Luke's school. On the other, they seem to ultimately follow Palpatine's command, not Kylo's. That's one very strange point on its own, but even putting their allegiance aside, what is their purpose when they do follow Kylo's lead? They arrive on Pasaana and even locate the derelict ship when the gang try to start it up. But they seem content with capturing Chewie and Chewie alone, even though they (and an entire detachment of Stormies) can clearly see and hear the ship's engines burst to life just a few feet away, and Finn runs out to yell at Rey a minute later. They don't capture Finn, Poe, or 3P0, they don't disable the ship, they just... take Chewie and leave, even though it's in everyone's best interest to capture everyone and thus force Rey to confront Kylo right then and there. Then, even though they track the good guys to Kijimi and summon Kylo there, apparently they completely lose them immediately upon landing, because they're STILL trying to find them by the time their boss arrives (and Kylo absolutely wants Rey captured by this point, since he orders his ship locked down when she realizes she's on board). Then they just stay behind when Kylo goes to corner Rey alone on Kef Bir. So, what purpose are they supposed to fulfill in their service to Kylo, if they keep giving Rey and her friends opportunities to get away, seemingly deliberately?
  • The ultimate loyalty of the Knights seems to be to the Dark Side. So though Kylo Ren is nominally their master they are following the Emperor's agenda throughout the movie. The Emperor wants Rey to come to Exegol and strike him down in anger, allowing his spirit and the souls of the past Sith who are merged with him to migrate to her. Any move that would kill Rey or allow Kylo Ren to capture her and prevent her from coming to Exegol and confronting the Emperor is therefore counterproductive.

Pryde ship's design

• Heroes land on Pryde's flagship, and then open some hatch, drop a bomb in it and disable the navigational systems. Why would a battleship the size of an island have its crucial systems located near its surface?
  • Said crucial systems operate the navigation tower, which is on the outside of the ship. So it at least makes a little bit of sense for the systems controlling the tower to be on the surface or directly underneath.
  • No, it doesn't. Naval ships have navigational equipment and weapons on the outside as well. Somehow nobody had the bright idea to put the control panel on the surface where a random enemy blast could take it out.
  • Right, because no Naval ship in history has ever had its equipment disabled by enemy fire, because all ship designers are able to put sufficient armor and defenses on every critical piece of equipment regardless of other design aspects and logistics.
• They have been. And yet nobody had the bright idea to put it on the surface, where a random enemy blast is far more lilely to damage it.
  • It could be that the actual equipment is further down, but the bomb was deployed in a place where the resultant damage would cascade to it (say a plasma conduit for the guns that runs close to the navigational control systems further in). So the bomb may not have actually hit the systems, but the stuff that blew up BECAUSE of the bomb did

Pryde ship's cannon

• Finn decides to take out the command post of the ship by overriding ship's own gun and aiming it at the C&C. How can a turret be taken over and fired from the outside, as if it was a cannon on an ancient frigate? And why would it be physically capable of swiveling to point at its own bridge?
  • The manual controls could be explained as an emergency backup in case the ship's systems fail or get shut down, allowing them to at least be fired in some capacity, if only as a last resort. The part about being able to shoot the bridge, not so much.
  • But why wouldn't those controls be inside, where the gunners could use them without becoming sitting ducks?
  • Who said those are the only manual controls? Finn is, more likely, overriding the controls by bypassing the normal controls.
  • If the canon had been designed to not fire in the direction of the bridge then an enemy ship could theoretically be safe by hovering in that blind spot between the turret and the bridge. Sith designers apparently felt it was more important to have no blind spots in laser turret coverage.
  • Wouldn't the obvious solution be to place some guns on the bridge section? Hell, place guns on every section! It's your goddamn flagship, this is absolutely not the time to be stingy with guns.
  • There might well be. To my knowledge, we don't have the ship's full load-out. As to why not? The bridge section may already be full of non-gun things, like command centers, computers, etc. Adding guns that A. will be targeted by enemies and B. will explode if the enemy shoots them, may not be the wisest idea.
  • Enemy will target the bridge no matter what, because it's the bridge, it has command centers, computers, etc. The best thing you'd want to do is discourage them as much as possible, and the absolutely last thing you'd want is to make it shootable with your own guns, especially when they're so easy to hack.
  • Yes, and guns will make it more of a target. The fact of the matter is that the guns could point that way, and apparently the ship designers here didn't put guns on the command center. Sorta like how real naval ships don't have guns attached to the command centers.
  • No, but neither do they make their command centers shootable by their own guns. Apparently they see the chances of an enemy using their CC as cover extremely slim.

Poe Dameron or Launchpad McQuack?

• What possible reason could Poe have to crash the Falcon when its landing gear is busted? She has repulsorlifts she can use just fine to hover in place and settle down gently on the grass without causing further damage to the hull or landing struts. They could have even used the ship to fly over to the Death Star wreckage and drop off Rey directly at the tower.
  • The repulsorlifts may also be busted. The Falcon is in rough shape throughout the movie.
  • And yet she did hover in the previous scene when they were picking Rey off the Star Destroyer, and looked perfectly fine in general. Did they have an off-screen battle with an enemy armada afterwards?
  • The Falcon has been in a continuous state of falling apart at bad times throughout every movie it's been in. It's a 50-year-old clunker held together by Chewie, duct tape and the will of whoever's in the pilot seat.
    • The Falcon could be focused on reliability for key components (airborne mobility, weapons, hyperdrive (though we've seen that part is somewhat (extremely) finicky). Could be that they had to rewire the Hyperdrive with the repulsors, or the skips caused the systems to burn out.

The ship in Rey's memory

• Before all the reveals Rey's memory was quite straightforward - her parents abandoned her and took off in that ship she saw flying away. But now... when and how is it supposed to take place? Why is she fighting the guy holding her and looking longingly at the ship that belongs to some bounty hunter? He tracked down her parents after they've already hidden her, so he just killed them and left. Is that correct? But then how does Rey fit in?
  • The story now is that the bounty hunter found her parents, then took them off planet, interrogated them, and killed them. Presumably, they sold Rey in a hurry, such that she was still within sight of the ship when it took off.
  • So wait, she's looking at Ochi taking off with her parents immediately after they'd sold her off? So, he caught up with them immediately after that, like 5 feet away from her, and THAT'S when he left instead of searching the area? Or at least return after killing them? What, did he simply go back to Palpatine and said:"I'm sorry, My Lord, but they wouldn't tell me where the girl was, so I killed them. What, search for her on that planet? Nah, the mother said she wasn't there. What do you mean she lied? You can do that?.. Well, now you're telling me!"
  • Yes, apparently. That's the information the film presents. Given the only thing we see of Ochi in this movie is him being long dead in a pit trap set by a random wild animal, I'm inclined to believe he wasn't the cream of the crop as far as bounty hunters go.
  • Do we know that was the Bounty Hunter's ship *before* he kidnapped and killed Rey's parents? It could have been the parents' or the smuggler they paid to get them off Jakku before Ochi took it from them.
    • The notion that it belonged to her parents may have some merit. After all, Rey seems recognize the ship based on what's on the inside rather than only the outside. If it had been Ochi's ship all along, there would be no reason for her to have ever seen its interior.
  • Kylo Ren says that Palpatine directly ordered Ochi to kill Rey's parents. So it was his decision that further torture wouldn't reveal where she was, not Ochi's.
  • Shadow of the Sith confirms it was Ochi’s ship, but that Rey’s parents stole it from him before hiding Rey on Jakku. He caught up with them just after they left the planet.

Why DID Ochi kill Rey's parents?

• Why not torture them for Rey's location and/or deliver them to Palpatine so that he could read their minds?
  • Did Ochi even know he was working for Palpatine, or was he just a bounty hunter who figured he would get paid just as much if he killed them?
  • Taking into account the dagger which could only have been made by Palpatine or at least under his direction, it seems that yes, Ochi had to have been knowingly working for him.
  • It seems that he *was* torturing them for information and killed them when he got it, but was himself killed by the sand trap before he could return to his ship and head to Jakku. As for bringing them back to make Palpatine do it, showing up without the one thing a Sith Lord told you to get seems like a great way to get force-choked.
  • Kylo Ren says that the Emperor ordered Ochi to kill Rey's parents after they refused to tell him where Rey was. So yes, Ochi knew he was working directly for the Emperor and it was Palpatine's decision that more torture wouldn't get him the information.
  • That was uncharacteristically magnanimous of him. And sloppy. That's his granddaughter we're talking about, his way out of his decrepit body. Why wouldn't he exhaust every possible opportunity to find her?
    • Isn't it said that his initial intention was to kill Rey, as well? Turning her or possessing her was probably something he switched to when she actually showed up to Exegol; he had her parents killed because he actually believed them when they said Rey was gone.
  • Presumably he thought he did. Maybe he said Rey was dead. After all, he's a son/clone of Palpatine — if Palpatine didn't want his enemies finding something, destroying it is among the things he'd do.
  • Shadow of the Sith offers up a really basic explanation: Ochi was completely wasted when he finally caught up with Rey’s parents, in addition to having been driven insane by the influence of the Sith dagger.

What was Palpatine's proposed plan?

• Was he meaning his soul would join with Rey the same way all the other Sith were joined to him as in some sort of "Avatar state" or did he mean he was going to take over her body with total control? If it's the latter, what made him think Rey would want that, he's basically saying "Strike me down and I'll get your body and your soul goes to oblivion, sound like a plan?"
  • You may discern a pattern here: Palpatine habitually gets to within seconds of winning, then he has to open his big mouth and ruin it by gloating.
  • He was hinging on Rey being so full of rage that she wasn't thinking clearly, and wouldn't realize his goal of taking her body until it was too late.
  • But she obviously wasn't. Like, at all. Sure, she hated his guts, but just on a general principle. She was somber and collected, nothing like she was with Kylo or Luke with Vader. Was Palpatine that bad at reading people?
  • Yes. That's Palpatine for you: he thinks he knows and controls everyone and everything, and is supremely smug and overly confident about it, even when that's clearly not the case.
  • Basically Palpatine was baiting Rey into going along with his plan by using her friends as hostages. If she refuses, the Resistance is blown to tiny bits. If she agrees, then there is a chance Rey could resist the resulting posession long enough to order the fleet to cease fire and let her friends escape.

What happened to Luke's green lightsaber ?

• In the finished film, there is no sign of his second weapon at all ? Except in one flashback of Luke training Leia where his lightsaber is clearly green. Did he discard it after his failure of Ben's training ? This is unclear, especially when Rey refers Anakin's blue lightsaber as Luke's, which is technically true as he uses it before losing it on Bespin, but with the timeline, he also technically uses his green lightsaber much longer than Anakin's. For the dates: Anakin's lightsaber, from 0 ABY -> 3 ABY and his green one : from 3 ABY -> 28 ABY (the date of the destruction of his temple and the fall of Ben Solo to the Dark Side). Also, Anakin's lightsaber only resurfaces on the Galactic Conflict in 34 ABY.
  • It's also shown in the flashback in The Last Jedi for the record. Presumably, he brought it with him into exile and it was somewhere in his quarters. Or he got rid of it when he severed his connection to the Force.
  • He probably threw it off a cliff into the ocean when he decided to sever himself from the Force.
  • The last time it was seen chronologically was when Ben thought Luke was going to kill him and knocked him unconscious. It's likely that the lightsaber was lost or destroyed when Ben destroyed Luke's temple. If not, Luke probably threw it away or destroyed it himself as it reminded him of his greatest shame, since he considered killing his own nephew with it.
  • The Last Jedi novelization mentions that after Luke's death, the Ach-To caretakers took it. It's unknown if Rey knew, but if she did, she probably let them keep it, since they could be trusted.

Why did Kylo lie to Rey about her origin in The Last Jedi, only to tell her the truth in this movie?

• In The Last Jedi Kylo told Rey that her parents were merely scavengers and nobodies, and Rey sensed this to be the truth... But this movie retcons that revelation, when Kylo tells Rey that her father was the son of Palpatine. However, this raises the question: why did Kylo lie to her in the previous movie? If his purpose was to demoralise Rey, wouldn't it have been more effective to reveal that instead of her family being "nobodies", she was actually the grand-daughter of the genocidal dictator who wiped out the Jedis? But if Kylo's plan wasn't to demoralise Rey back then, and he lied to Rey about her parentage so he could convince her not the let past Sith/Jedi conflicts define her future (just like he had decided to do by giving up Sith traditions), then what was the point of telling her the truth now? He still has the same plans for her as in the previous movie, so why did he change his mind about telling Rey the truth?
  • He learned about her parents and told her (The Last Jedi), then learned that she was a Palpatine later and told her then (The Rise of Skywalker).
  • Yeah, the beginning of this film makes it obvious that Kylo Ren didn't know she was a Palpatine, considering the first scene in The Rise Of Skywalker is where Palpatine reveals it to Kylo Ren.
  • Okay, if Kylo didn't know about the Palpatine connection before this movie, then the question becomes: why did he claim in The Last Jedi that Rey's parents were "nobodies", if he didn't know who they actually were? He seems to know an awful lot about their lives in that movie, including the fact that they lie in "a pauper's grave", so he must've known how they died... Yet the fact that they were killed by a known bounty hunter didn't make him suspect they weren't actually "nobodies"?
  • He didn't necessarily know what happened to Rey's parents - he was just half-guessing (and maybe using images from her own mind) and saying what he thought might break her, but also predispose her to him, like a clumsy and mean attempt at replacement psychology: "nobody gives a shit about you, except for me, so let's be friends and rule the galaxy!!". That obviously didn't work. So he reveals her lineage to her as an, again very clumsy and ill-conceived, appeal to her vanity: "Hey, you're the heir to the Imperial throne! And so am I (kinda)! Let's be friends and rule the galaxy!"
  • Similar to what someone said above, Kylo only learned who her parents were to an extent and that they were nobodies. With the Palpatine's daughter revelation, Kylo told her they were nobodies because they chose to become nobodies. Ostensibly, even with all of Kylo's resources and info, Rey's parents were able to hide their true origins enough with the intent of protecting Rey. Consider it this way: Beru and Owen were essentially nobodies as well. They were not related by blood to Luke and only 3 people (Obi-wan, Beru and Owen) would know of Luke's connection with Anakin. As for how they were killed, even though they were killed by a bounty hunter, they could easily have been killed while the hunter was on assignment and killed in the melee. All Kylo could have known is they were nobodies (in the grand scheme of things), they were killed, and because they were nobodies they were buried in a "pauper's grave" because that's what was done.
  • Also, remember that in The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren gets into Rey's mind, to an extent. His, "they were nobodies" speech could be less about what he, independently, found out, and more him putting together what he saw in her mind. Rey is very, very much in denial about what happened in TFA, so it wouldn't take much for Kylo Ren to "see" her memory and jump to the conclusion that her parents were nobody junk traders and she's in a pit of denial about it.
  • That idea is supported by his saying that she has "always known" who they were. His primary source of information on her parents during Last Jedi was her own memories, which he took from her during their mental struggle in The Force Awakens.

Why does Kylo Ren remake his helmet?

• In The Last Jedi, Kylo broke his helmet, which was supposed to a symbolic gesture showing that he wouldn't let the legacy of Vader or the Sith define him anymore. There's no indication in this movie that he has changed his mind, as he's still opposed to Palpatine and the Sith ways... So what is the point of having his helmet remade? If he simply needs a new helmet, couldn't he have just made a new one that doesn't resemble Vader's, instead of reforging his old one from its broken pieces?
  • In Last Jedi he broke it primarily because Snoke mocked him for wearing it, calling it "ridiculous". In this film we can see that he still has Vader's helmet in a place of honor in his quarters, and when Palpatine shows up he accepts a new helmet created by Palpatine's Sith technicians as a symbol of their alliance. Yes, it's an alliance he intends to betray, but he apparently had no objection to wearing a helmet again.
  • So Snoke, who was Palpatine's puppet, wanted Kylo to get rid of the ridiculous helmet, which he did, but now Palpatine wants him to reforge it? How does that make sense?
  • Snoke was manipulating Ren emotionally when he began mocking him for wearing the helmet. It was classic abuser behavior to get him to do what Snoke wanted him to. He would no doubt have eventually told Ren to reforge the helmet as part of Snoke's "renewed confidence" of Ren's destiny as the new Vader.
  • Except that Vader wore that helmet because he needed it. Kylo wore it out of fanboism and insecurity. Of course it was ridiculous, Snoke was just the only one who wasn't afraid to say so aloud. Telling Kylo to reforge it makes no sense. Neither does it make for Palpatine to bother reforging it or for Kylo to accept it, especially after learning that Vader's voice was Palpatine's manipulation.
  • What matters is Kylo's need to live up to something, and his mask and Vader's mask are clearly ways that his abusers have found to manipulate him.
  • Well, yes, but wasn't the lynchpin of that manipulation "Vader's" voice that apparently urged Ben to carry on his legacy? Now that he'd learned it was a lie, how can it still hold sway over him? In addition, his motto was "Let the past die, kill it if you must". That doesn't sound like someone trying to live up to their ancestors, or seek their approval, at all. Just the opposite, in fact. It makes sense for Rey to reforge Luke's sword, since she is, in fact "living in the past" and holds the relics in great regard, but Kylo most certainly doesn't.
  • Right, because abused and manipulated people instantly and completely shrug off that manipulation the instant they find out one piece of it wasn't based on the truth. This is a strawman — reducing Kylo to a single line, then complaining about the movie because the writers didn't keep his entire characterization in line with that one single line.
  • Downplaying crucial character scenes doesn't make a valid argument. The statement you use to win an enemy over to your side is not just some offhanded comment. And that wasn't just "one piece" either - it was the cornerstone of the entire sharade. The core motivation behind Kylo Ren's actions. Remember him worshipping Vader's helmet and promising to "finish what you have started"? That wasn't "a single line" either - it was a sacred oath, or at least it was framed as one. To learn that it was all fake, that some old fart has used your father and your mentor and made a mockery of your deepest beliefes, all to make you a tool - a saint would've flown off the handle, let alone a rageball like Kylo.
  • Right. Kylo is no stable person. He was still manipulated and abused for years. It's not something one simply shrugs off. Besides, Kylo was never genuinely loyal to Palpatine or sincerelly trusted him at any point in the film. He is biding his time until he can get Rey, so he'll pretend to ignore Palpatine's life long manipulations of him to do so, even if it means accepting a command to reforge a helmet he no longer likes.

Why did it take Palpatine so long to create a new clone body?

• Rise Of Skywalker is about 30 years after Return Of The Jedi. So what was he doing all this time and why it take so long to make the new body? You can't say they have to let the clone body grow up the slow way as A. the clones in The Clone Wars were made into adults in a few years at most and B. if that were the case, his new body should look like a 30 year old Palpatine, not an even older, almost undead looking version of his ROTJ self.
  • Did he create a clone body? It seemed that this was the same body he had in RotJ, re-animated through unnatural Sith means. That's why it's in such bad shape during this film. See "Clone or Corpse?" above.
    What was he doing the past 30 years? Manipulating Snoke, the First Order, and Kylo Ren from behind the scenes while he prepared the giant fleet of planet-killing star destroyers seen in this movie.
  • We don't even know that it IS a clone body; the movie deliberately leaves it ambiguous. It's possible that it's Palpatine's original corpse, retrieved by his followers and (poorly) stitched back together. Alternatively, he could've been cloned soon after Rot J and because of him returning to life using Sith science and the dark side, that horrific half-corpse is as good as it gets. We just don't know.
  • How could it possibly be his original body? It not only fell down into a reactor and exploded, the Death Star II it was in exploded shortly after. His original body should be individual atoms by this point.
  • Well something seemed to explode and send a weird energy pattern/Sith spirits up and down the shaft after he was dropped down it, but we never actually ''saw'' his body explode. And as the movie reveals, large chunks of Death Star II landed on nearby moons of Endor largely intact afterwards, including the throne room.

When exactly did Palpatine have a son?

• OK, so... Rey was, what, 19 initially? Born something like 10 years after Vader threw Palpatine down a reactor shaft? (And if that's the case, then HOW could Palpatine have been hunting her as a child? Was he already somewhat resurrected by then?) When her parents left her on Jakku, they looked young enough with no noticeable gray hair (unless they just age super well). So if they're an estimated 40 or younger when they left her, then... Was Palpatine's son born around the time Palpatine became the Emperor? Would that make his kid around Luke and Leia's ages? Was he really THAT OLD when he became a dad?? And the million dollar question - did it happen before or after he gave himself a face full of lightning?
  • Some human males can sire offspring into their eighties, whereas Palpatine looked like he was in his fifties during the prequel trilogy, so there's nothing weird about him becoming a dad at that age. As for his face, not everyone cares so much about appearance, maybe he had a spouse who was attracted to him regardless? Or, alternatively, if the son was sired after he became Emperor, he could've easily forced or manipulated someone to carry his baby, or paid for someone to do it; romance doesn't have to come into play at all.
  • Supplementary material reveals that Rey's father was Palpatine's "son" in that he was an imperfect clone that he'd made, rather than his biological child to whom a woman gave birth. With that in mind, he probably could've been conceived after the fall of the Empire, but it seems more likely to have happened beforehand, or else Rey's father probably would've spread the word about Sheev still being alive.
  • According to Wookiepedia, Palpatine's son was cloned on Exegol some time after the fall of the Empire. And since Palpatine would have no use for a crying baby, he probably was conceived as an older person from the get-go, which would circumvent the issue of his age not lining up with Rey's.
    • In Attack of the Clones, the use of growth accelerators is mentioned as a way of cutting down on the time needed for each clone to age.

Why Rey's parents left her with Unkar Plutt?

• With the revelation that Rey's parents loved her and didn't sell her to Unkar Plutt for drinking money as Kylo previously stated, why they left their daughter with Plutt? From what we know, Unkar isn't the right person to trust the care of a child, and the Novelization of The Force Awakens even hints that he lusts for Rey! Even when Luke and Leia were hidden separately to protect them from their father, they were given to kind and fatherly people like the Organas and the Lars, so why they didn't search for a good guy whom they could entrust their daughter's safety or simply an orphanage?
  • What makes you think they had time for that? They're clearly rushed and panicking during their last moments with Rey, and she remembers seeing them take off in Ochi's ship, so he must've been right on their tail at that time. And none of Unkar Plutt's negative qualities are very relevant if Rey's parents didn't know about them... As if they were supposed to have foreseen he would lust after their daughter in her adult years, something which is only hinted at in the novelization of the movie.
  • In addition, while Rey's life circumstances aren't ideal, they don't seem that bad if you go back and watch The Force Awakens. She has to salvage and trade parts from old starships in exchange for food, true, but look at her otherwise. She seems to have her own private place to live, she's healthy, smart, and strong-willed, she can defend herself, she's a half-decent pilot, she knows her way around starships... It's almost implied that she can leave Jakku whenever she wants, and when she does she gets handed an impromptu job offer from Han Solo.
  • The prequel novel Shadow of the Sith gives an explanation. Rey’s parents had stolen Ochi’s ship from him and needed a place to hide her temporarily while they shook him off. They left her with Plutt on account of the trusting working relationship they once had with him, with the understanding that they would come back for her later. However, Ochi ended up finding and killing them after they left Jakku, and Plutt presumably put Rey to work scavenging once the payment they’d left him with ran out.

Jamming Speeders? What?

• If it's possible to jam speeders why didn't they do that in the Battles of Hoth or Crait, where the good guys almost exclusively used speeders? Ok, so they were literally right on top of the star destroyer so maybe it has a really short range?
  • That is most likely the answer, that the jamming was only really possible because they landed right on top of the Star Destroyer.
  • Is it possible that speeder-jamming technology is a fairly recent development, like hyperspace tracking?
  • It might be that the technology is only able to be deployed on specific things (maybe requires Durasteel with specific conduits installed during construction, and only applies to the surface itself)

Boarders and speeders

• Why would they even assume that the boarders would use speeders (or horses)? Star Destroyer is big, sure, but not so big that you would need to outrun the enemy, or harass them, or go on patrols, or deliver messages, or anything such crafts could be useful for. At boarding you'd want to land as close to the entry points as possible, suppress whatever point defences you can and go in, while using whatever cover you can find on the surface. Speeders are not useful for any of that at all. Neither are the horses. I'm not surprised they cut them out after the first shot, I'm surprised they left them in at all.
  • Apparently landing closer to the entry points wasn't possible. There's a lot of point defense on a Star Destroyer, after all. And why wouldn't it be useful to get from your landing spot to your target faster?
  • Is there? Was there even a single turret firing on the assaulters? There were only the stormtroopers running onto the surface to engage them like it was a naval battle.
  • The point defense is all the stuff shooting at the fighters. That the assault craft was able to get through where it did doesn't mean it could have easily landed anywhere.
  • Yes, it kinda does. Either the defences can fire on the surface, and then they should be blasting the assaulters themselves as well. Or they cannot and then, once the craft is through, it has free reign to land anywhere.
  • Finding one place you can land does not at all mean you can land anywhere. It means you land there and get out instead of pushing forward and giving the enemy even more chances to shoot you down.

Luke was going to burn WHAT?

• So, it turns out that the sacred Jedi texts contain the only lead to Exegol the heroes have. And Luke was going to burn them. The hell? Before we assumed they were just, well, sacred texts, dogmas, stories, training techniques etc, so burning them kinda made sense for a man deep in crisis of faith. But to destroy the actually essential tactical information, even if he himself failed to follow on it? Was it so hard to pass it to Rey? Or did he kinda forget about it?
  • The location of Exegol wasn't "essential tactical information" until Palpatine started broadcasting, which was after Luke tried to burn the tree. Also? He was in an emotional place and doing it at least in part out of frustration. People don't make the best decisions in that condition.
  • But he was specifically searching for the wayfinder. Why would he bother (and also record it) if he didn't consider it important?
  • Again: He's in an emotional place, feeling frustrated at the world and the galaxy in general. Sure, he considers it important, but he apparently recorded it years ago, and made no progress since. He might have considered it a myth by that point for all we know. The point is, emotional people do not think coldly and logically.

Rey was going to burn WHAT?

• Luke master, like apprentice... What the hell was Rey thinking when she was burning Kylo's ship with the second Wayfinder in it? They've spent half the movie acquiring the damn thing, now they've got it, and she's just burning it?! It's not like she didn't know about it - it was sitting in the middle of cockpit. Again, was it so hard to drop it with her friends before going into exile? If it wasn't for Luke, the Resistance and the entire galaxy would've been screwed!
  • Because she's severely emotionally distraught and not thinking straight. People have emotions that, sometimes, stop them from making rational and well-thought-out decisions.
  • She didn't know it was in there. It was in a little box she hadn't opened.
  • Kylo said the only way to Exegol was with him. Makes sense that he has one.
  • She might not have known that he had it with him at the moment, since she seemed surprised to see it. Plus even if she did initially deduce that from his statement, given that death of Leia and everything else, she may have forgotten about that until Luke's words reminded her.

Rey's exile

• Speaking of which, why would she choose that particular point to suddenly fall into despair and run away? She got the wayfinder, she defeated her Enemy Without, she defeated Kylo, and even healed him, so she's clearly not falling to the Dark Side. Sure, Leia dying put her down, but come on, even without the reality subtext, they had to realize this could happen at any moment. And Chewie was alive! Overall, things were starting to look up. While she learned about being Palpatine's granddaughter, that, by itself shouldn't really mean much, since it turned out her actual parents loved her and were heroic.
  • It's not about her actually falling to the dark side. She realizes she could, and that her long-lost family is in fact the single most evil person in the galaxy. She's emotionally distraught. She has feelings and emotions that result in her not thinking clearly at this point in the movie.
  • But... it's not. In fact, it's the direct opposite of that! Her father, for whom that was actually true, chose to oppose his evil father and sacrificed his own life for his daughter, and so did her mother. Shouldn't that have reinpsired her, and proved that that lineage per se means nothing, that what you do matters etc? As for potential for falling, that's apparently something every force user has to be wary of. Was there anything tangible to feed her fear at that particular moment? "Killing" Chewie didn't do it for her, but seeing an edgy cosplayer going "bleh!" did? Or was it fighting Kylo? The man destroyed their chance at beating Palpatine! Of course she'd have to beat him, and Jedi are allowed to fight, right?
  • And when she starts to think clearly later, she most likely realizes that. As it is, she's in shock from the revelation, which combines with her feelings for Ben Solo, and conflicts with the fact that she just stabbed the dude while he was unarmed and distracted, out of anger. Striking out of anger is a Dark Side thing. She's a human being, which means she's not able to instantly and completely put aside all of her emotions from the fight she was just in. She needs time to sort through those emotions, which is why Luke has to calm her down.
  • It is a direct reaction to her almost killing Ben. Kylo Ren defeated her, and she struck him down out of Dark Side emotions - anger, fear, and aggression. The fact that she was able to heal him immediately after doesn't change what she felt in that moment. She was afraid of the very real possibility that she could fall to the Dark Side because she had given in for a moment in the fight with Kylo.
  • It was a fight. On swords. Which, for once, cannot be set to stun. Killing her opponent was always an obvious and quite likely possibility. And anger is a natural and necessary emotion during a fight. Rey, as a competent fighter, should know that. And she didn't execute him when he was helpless and beaten - she reflexively took advantage of a momentary distraction of an opponent who was wailing on her just a moment before. But if, regardless, she was so deathly afraid of falling to the dark side, then why didn't she forswear her sword back in TLJ after she killed the red guards? She was angry back then as well, and she didn't try to spare them at all. What, they didn't count? And neither did the TIE pilots she'd blasted three at a time? Instead she goes out of her way to restore the sword (or have Leia restore it). So, is violence a sure ticket to the DS or not for her?
  • That's the way Star Wars works. Luke could kill everyone on the first Death Star without any hint of falling to the Dark Side, but if he uses anger to strike down one old man on the second Death Star he falls to the Dark Side forever. Likewise Vader can kill hundreds of rebel mooks and murder children, but as long as he saves his son from falling to the Dark Side he gets the same afterlife as Obi-Wan and Yoda.
  • People have complex emotions. This means that sometimes, they take actions in anger that they regret after they see the results. People are not cold and rational robots who think, "I am in fight. People die in fight. I feel nothing when person I hit die." Let's take a similar scene that literally nobody complains about: Luke fighting Vader in ROTJ. Is Luke a terribly written, inconsistent character because he angrily chopped Vader's hand off, then immediately showed guilt and stopped. Clearly he was fighting with swords too, so he should have just guiltlessly offed Vader without a second thought, right?

Count Dooku

• Regarding Dooku's soul, assuming he isn't part of Palpatine's All Sith statement, did he get to help Rey destroy Sidious out of penance since he realized he was his pawn in his final moments and having once been a Jedi, or is his turn from the order to the Dark Side and lack of an in-life Heel–Face Turn mean that he can't do so?
  • That would tie in with what it takes to become a Force Ghost. If the requirement is "dying while actively fighting the Dark Side" then Dooku didn't fulfill it.

Catapult Speeders?

• Why would the First Order deploy ground-based, continuous track (aka "caterpillar tread") speeder bikes on the rough, arid terrain of Pasaana? There doesn't appear to be any repulsorlift interference since the locals use regular floating vehicles themselves, and the tracks are considerably less versatile and probably much slower than ordinary speeder bikes. Their only purpose seems to be to be able to pivot in order to launch a jetpack trooper (which bounces the driver up and down and prevents the bike from changing direction for a few seconds), but do the troopers really need the assist?
  • Obviously it was so Finn could throw a rope at the track of one and disable it that way. That trick wouldn't have worked on a speeder, at least not the same way.
  • Having the bike pivot upwards to catapult its jetpack-using passenger may ensure that backwash from the jetpack's ignition won't knock the bike askew or barbecue its driver.
  • While reasonable, it does highlight that the bike could just pivot only the part that needs to "launch" the trooper without making the driver bounce around; on the other, it still makes the use of tread-based vehicles inefficient when even the most under-equipped FO garrison on the planet surely has repulsor speeders to get around, and perform military ops, on a planet such as Pasaana.
    • It could be a matter of maintenance (tracked vehicles can be repaired comparatively quickly, and with less difficulty (a broken tread can simply have the damaged sections replaced with new links, whereas repulsors need to be wholesale replaced and adjusted)) or ease of use (less sand kicked up and in a single direction (behind the vehicle).

Zorii and Babu on Exegol

• Zorii gave Poe her Captain's Medallion back when the group was on Kijimi. She also established that she was not going to be able to leave because of it. Poe never returned the medallion back to Zorii. So when the Final Order destroys Kijimi, how exactly did her and Babu Frik manage to make it off Exegol with no forms of transport or foresight as to what was happening? The planet exploded quickly, leaving almost no time for escape. So what gives?
  • Zorii said that she needed the medallion to access the hyperspace routes leading to the Colonies that she wanted to move to, because the First Order were blockading them. She did not need the medallion just to escape Kijimi. Apparently after Poe left she and Babu Frik did escape Kijimi and decided they would answer Lando's call for help at Exegol.
  • Wait, "blockading hyperspace routes"? Was that ever a thing in the movies? Or, for that matter, hyperspace routes themselves? I always got an impression that captains laid their own routes through HS, based on either coordinates or signals from trackers.
    • MOST captains travel through lanes, using established routes and safe paths between systems. Some captains chart their own paths based on their own nav data, but it's rare and risky. Think hiking or any outdoor activity. Most people stick to established trails since they're safe and easily navigable, but some people do have the skills and audacity to go without trails and pathfind their way around.

Ahsoka Tano

• In Rebels when Ahsoka confronts Darth Vader, and Vader says that revenge isn't the Jedi way, she relies with "I'm no Jedi." Yet here she is part of All the Jedi who talks to Rey briefly?
  • This goes along with the theme of the previous movie. A "Jedi" isn't just someone who spends a lot of time floating stuff and memorizing philosophy. It's a person who's willing to do what must be done for the greater good, which she was.
    • I'd argue though that "doing what must be done for the greater good" is something extremely vague and subjective argument, and be honest and claim that she was just here as a cameo to The Clone Wars. She's a popular character after all. Alternatively: since the Force Ghosts are able to talk with the living despite being, well, ghosts. Who says they cannot keep in touch with other souls who didn't became Force Ghosts? In this light, I'd plausibly consider that Force Ghosts such as Obi Wan, Yoda and Qui Gon "linked" Rey to other Force Users across the galaxy (if Ashoka is still alive) and the "Force netherworld" (so to say). After all, we saw Force Ghosts grabbing lightsabers and summoning lightnings, so speaking with other dead people and briefly bringing their ego back to the surface should be within the realm of possibilities for them.

Why does Rey die?

• After defeating Palpatine, Rey collapses and dies. Her death can't be caused by Palpatine's lightnings because they never even touch her. Her death can't be caused by whatever Palpatine drains from her because he drains Ben just as well, throws him into a chasm, and this doesn't seem to damage him much. So, why does she die?
  • It's possible that some of the force lightning slipped through her defenses or even that the effort of reflecting such a powerful attack used the last of her energy, keep in mind that she's getting shot at point blank by the same attack that was just shredding an entire fleet of ships up in the sky. Even with all of the jedi supporting her it's pretty optimistic to think that anyone could withstand that without taking significant damage of some form.
  • It seemed to be from massive strain from channeling the amount of power it would take to deflect that amount of lightning. Remember, Palpatine disabled an entire fleet just a few minutes before, and he was putting the same effort into just targeting Rey. She may have been able to channel all the power of the Jedi, but that doesn’t mean that her body wouldn’t give out from sheer effort.

Palpatine forgot about making the Force Bond

• Snoke claimed to have forged the connection between Kylo and Rey. This connection is later revealed to be a "dyad in the Force", a previously unmentioned but apparently known power, according to Palpatine. But why would this be surprising to Palpatine? He created and controlled Snoke from Exegol, he's the one who forged the bond, so why is he apparently unaware as to its nature?
  • The "force bond" that let Rey and Kylo communicate is not the same thing as their status as a dyad. The dyad is a thing they were born with, fate of the force and all that. The bond was an after-market connection added later. Put it this way — the Dyad is like Rey and Kylo were born twins; the force bond is them getting the same cell phone plan so they stay in touch later.
  • Is this explicitly stated in the source material, or is it a fan theory crafted to match the events on the screen and novel? Regardless, even if they were separate concepts, if Palpatine indeed controlled Snoke from afar, Snoke himself described the connection between Kylo and Rey as "the dark rises and the light to meet it", so he was well aware that there was a special destiny between the two of them as defined by the Force.
  • Explicitly stated? No. Easily inferred from what we see on screen? Yes. The bond that Snoke claims to forge and the dyad are presented as two different things; it's possible that their status as a dyad made the bond easier, or otherwise helped facilitate it, but they're still two different things. And Snoke isn't describing the connection between them, specifically with that "dark rises" line. He's talking in general terms, about how the dark side of the force and the light side are in conflict.
  • The DS and LS are always in conflict. There'd be no reason for Snoke to comment on this unless there was something inherently special about these two. Also, if the dyadness facilitated the bond, then Snoke should've known about it. Contrary to the analogy above, this would be like having twins, commenting on their likeness, devising a plan for one to impersonate another, and then making their twin status a big reveal.
  • This depends on how much control he has over Snoke's actions. If controlling him means literally being his eyes and ears, he definitely should not have been surprised. If Snoke has his own free will and just sent to be his Puppet King (Palpatine said he MADE Snoke, not controlled his body and looked through his literal eyes), then just because Snoke might have known about the dyad doesn't mean Palpatine did.
  • He did tell Kylo that he was "every voice in his head", including Snoke's. That strongly implies having more or less direct control over Snoke. Of course, he could've been lying but why?

Zorri's medallion

• Why hadn't Zorri Blitz used the medallion until that point? They hammer down on how life on that planet sucks, and she flees just a few hours(?) afterwards, since she escapes planet's destruction, so apparently the means of transportation weren't the problem, so what was holding her?
  • Zorri was saving up money so that when she did arrive somewhere less garbage she wouldn't become the local crazy homeless woman or worse. A lot of people only focus on how to get out when looking at these sorts of situations in fiction not what happens after, you can't assume that just escaping the First Order means everything will be okay. As she said she was on her way out the door soon when Poe happened to turn up.

Dealing with the space cavalry

• When the space cavalry is charging across General Pryde's Star Destroyer, why doesn't he simply tilt the ship to the side, thus dumping them off? Or if he can't do that, he could simply do a hard nose down or nose up, also effectively removing them. As far as we know, the space cavalry can't fly.
  • Someone has been watching the HiSHE version. The Resistance briefing made it clear that it's tough for ships the size of Star Destroyers to maneuver in the atmosphere of Exegol. If they started doing acrobatics to try to shake the space cavalry off of the hull they could be risking having the ship crash, probably killing thousands of crewmembers. Plus it's the command ship that all the other ships are depending on for their launch beacon. What would their maneuvers do to the guidance they are providing the other ships?
  • It wouldn't be a major advanced maneuver to just tilt the ship to the left or right for a bit, or push the nose up.
    • From a laymen’s perspective, wouldn’t that require tilting at a pretty steep angle for the horses to not be able to move around?
    • Star Destroyers have artificial gravity. Apparently it applies to people walking (or riding) on the outer hull as well.

About the Holdo Maneuver again

• If it only has like a 1 in a million chance of working, why did the people on the Supremacy immediately start freaking out when they realized what she had planned, as opposed to just saying "Oh, don't worry. The danger is minim-?
  • The reason it has such a small chance of working is that it is so easy for the would-be target to stop. The Supremacy was so focused on the transports that they didn't realize what Holdo was doing until it was too late.
  • But how would they stop it? Fire on the ship? They have shields, we've seen that even relatively small ships can withstand fire from Star Destroyers, at least for a short time (like Leia's ship in the beginning of New Hope). Get out of the way? Inertia is still a thing, a ship that huge wouldn't be able to maneuvre instantly. Jump themselves? Again, it takes time.
    • It could be that they'd deploy countermeasures (possibly a gravity well generator or similar) or put something in the way like a fighter.

Jedi Ghosts can hold lightsabers

• If Jedi ghosts can hold lightsabers, as was established by Luke in this movie, then why don't they just use said lightsabers to help the heroes defeat the bad guys? Why don't Luke or Yoda's ghost just walk up to Palpatine and slice him in half, since there would be nothing the emperor could do about it?
  • Why bother with a lightsaber? The last movie showed that Jedi ghosts can cause lightning to strike a target of their choosing. The answer lies in how exactly Jedi ghosts are appearing and manipulating the environment. They always do so in the presence of a friendly Jedi who is a past student. It may be that Jedi ghosts cannot appear to someone they do not have a master-student connection with. It's unknown if the ghost Jedi are actually using the Force connection of their student when they interact with the environment. So Yoda using lightning to zap the tree that held the sacred Jedi texts was actually Yoda's ghost borrowing Luke's connection to the Force. Likewise when Luke appears to Rey and catches his old lightsaber or lifts the X-wing out of the ocean it's actually Rey's connection to the Force doing the work. And when all the past Jedi channel their combined strength to defeat Palpatine, it has to be through someone who is alive and physically present - Rey.
  • *Occam's razor flashes* Maybe the force ghosts are only that powerful on that planet/island. It is a sacred place after all.
  • It's entirely possible the lightsaber is insubstantial as well as the Jedi and basically just for show.
  • It was referring to when Luke's force ghost catches Rey's lightsaber when she throws it into Kylo Ren's burning TIE fighter. That is not an insubstantial light saber.
    • Could be that Luke can interact with that particular saber because it's HIS, and attuned to him.

How did Kylo find Rey on the Death Star?

• Even if he'd bothered to read the inscription on the dagger (although why would he), that would've only given him the planet. Without the dagger itself he wouldn't have been able to pinpoint the exact location to search, and yet he's right behind Rey.
  • If he knows she's looking for something Sith-y on the Death Star, it's a safe assumption that that something would be in or near the throne room.
  • It's also possible that Palpatine told him where the other Sith wayfinder was.

During the face-off with Palpatine

• So, Rey is preparing to strike Palpatine down, she raises the lightsaber and instead teleports it to Ben. Ok, that's her "You've failed, Your Majesty, I'm a Jedi" moment, she refuses to go along with the ritual, good for her. But the very next thing she does is... pull out her second lightsaber. What was she going to do with it, other than kill Palpatine? And Palpatine... retreats and instead sicks the guards on her... why? Does he want to get killed by her or not? Or what, did the fact that she'd stopped to help Ben mean she's no longer angry enough for the ritual? But she'd agreed to it in the first place solely to save the Rebels, what has changed? Or did the guards move in on their own? Again, why? As far as they're aware, everything is proceeding by the plan, even if the Empress-to-be decided to switch her blade for some reason.
  • She's demonstrating that she's not going along with his plan.
  • How? Again, She ignites her second lightsaber after teleporting the first one to Ben. If not to kill Palpatine then why does she do it? Like, what would've happened if the guards didn't interfere? Would she have simply stood there watching the rebels getting slaughtered/hoping that something saves them? Or wait for Ben? But what did she expect him to do?
  • It appears that Palpatine's ritual involves having Rey kill him while using the Dark Side - that is, while feeling anger, fear, aggression, or despair. If she's facing him while feeling defiant and courageous she's not using the Dark Side, and if she kills him while she's in that state he won't be able to possess her and will be just plain dead.
  • Granted, but was she ever going to kill him with DS? Rey knew Palpatine killed her parents, and yet she was still overwhelmed by her fear of falling to the dark side and went into exile. That is not the behaviour of someone consumed by rage of vengeance. Then Luke talks her out of it, and she goes to Exegol, while leaving waypoints for the Rebels. So, again, it's not about her vengeance for her, it's about the greater cause. She isn't particularly eager to kill Palpatine, and again, the only reason she agrees to it is because he promises her the power to save the Rebels. Hell, if anything she should be feeling hope, not despair - that maybe she'll overcome Palp's spirit after they merge, otherwise what's the point in doing it if the Rebels are dead either way. Sending her saber to Ben was a rather Light Side act, but seeing how she's already saved him from dying it doesn't look particularly decisive either, definitely not enough for the guards to suddenly pounce on her.
  • Well, Rey apparently felt that it was a real possibility that she was going to fall to the Dark Side, and so did Kylo Ren. That probably indicates that she does in fact feel some fear, anger, or despair when going to face Palpatine. Ben joining her helps, but only when she finally makes the connection with the past light side Jedi and feel their support does she finally overcome the Dark Side feelings completely.
    • But she only makes this connection way later, after Palpatine drains them and yeets Kylo (I think). So, at that particular moment she should've still been leening to the Dark Side. Again, she instantly ignites her second lightsaber. If not to attack Palpatine, then for what? As far as she should be aware, bad guys aren't going to attack her, since they need her alive.

The nav tower

• Why exactly does taking out the nav tower cripple the fleet? Even if you buy that it helps them navigate when they're densely packed, surely each ship would have a fallback in case the signal was lost, even temporarily. They weren't doing any complicated maneuvers, they just needed to get enough altitude to spread out and deploy their shields. It shouldn't be that hard to just, y'know, go up. If it was meant to be a fixed point of reference on the ground to go up from, that was broken the minute they switched to the ship-mounted one.
  • Dialogue indicates the tower is needed in order for such large ships as star destroyers to maneuver in the atmosphere of Exegol. The backup system is apparently to have another ship transmit the navigation signal, but it looks like they need to have one fixed signal for all ships to triangulate on. After the command ship was destroyed they could presumably have set up another, but they were all destroyed by the galactic fleet before they could get organized enough to do so.
    • Nav towers guide ships/planes to specific points on the ground and around each other to avoid collision. There was absolutely nothing for them to collide with on the way up.
    • It could be used to relay exact coordinates for each Star Destroyer in real time, so that the was a miniscule chance of them clipping each other and possibly damaging vital components

Creating Snoke in a test tube

• The movie strongly implies Snoke was just a puppet created by Palpatine. So if Palpatine has the ability artificially create one of the most powerful and deadly Sith lords who ever lived, why only create one? Instead of just making one to run the First Order him, why didn't he just create an entire army of them and run the First Order himself? We saw how powerful one Snoke was. An army of them would be unstoppable. And why does he want a Snoke to run the First Order instead of running it himself? Snoke would be far more useful to Palpatine as a warrior, the way Darth Vader was, then as a puppet ruler.
  • The answer to that question would tie in with determining how much control Palpatine really had over Snoke, and whether he could maintain that control over a whole army of Snokes. A whole army of Snokes that won't obey his orders is a threat, not an asset. Darth Vader, you will remember, turned on Palpatine in the end.
  • But Vader wasn't artificially created, so that doesn't seem comparable. Presumably, Palpatine was confident he created Snoke to be sufficiently loyal, or else he never would have put in charge of the First Order.
  • Vader was artificially created - from the remnants of Anakin Skywalker - and there are numerous hints in the expanded universe that Palpatine built all sorts of controls into his apprentice's suit to help ensure Vader would never get out of his control. Obviously that didn't work out too well for him in the end. Again, he may have been sufficiently confident of his ability to control one Snoke, but not an army.
  • All Palpatine did to Vader was give him some robot body parts and equipment in order to compensate for his injuries after the fight with Obi-Wan. That's all the films showed. Not the same as creating a life form from scratch in a test tube.
  • Wouldn't creating more than one rouse more suspicion if one Snoke get's killed and then another one shows up?
  • Perhaps, it's just so insanely difficult that he only had one success in all those years. You'll notice the malformed clones flowing in the tubes. For all we know, he was trying, and failing, to replicate Snoke.

The consequences of Force healing

• Rey uses force healing twice with no consequences whatsoever, but when Kylo uses it, it kills him? What's up with that?
  • He gave Rey all his life force to restore her. Unlike the other two, she was straight up dead, not just injured.
    • But if Rey was dead, then why didn't she immediately vanish and turn into a force ghost, like what happens to Obi-Wan and Luke?
    • Qui-Gon and Anakin didn't vanish either, and neither did the Jedi killed in Order 66.
    • Not to mention Leia in this movie, who only vanishes after her son dies. The implication is that she was waiting for him.
  • Ben had also had a significant portion of his life force drained by Palpatine earlier. And then he fell down and abyss and had to climb back up. Rey is probably lucky that Ben had enough life force left to restore her.

Rey Skywalker?

• So, from a thematic standpoint, Rey calling herself "Rey Skywalker" at the end fit the title of the movie, shows that Rey fully rejects her evil grandpa, etc... But why Skywalker? Rey has spent maybe two or three days tops with Luke, who she did not have the best relationship with, and while she seems to have spend more time (maybe a few months?) with Leia, Leia is called Leia Organa at nearly every turn (including in this movie itself). Couldn't she have chosen some other name for herself? (Or chosen Organa instead?)
  • Her relationship with Luke may have started rockily, but in the end they both saved each other from despair, so it is important. And regardless, Luke was her hero. What's more important, he was everyone's hero, his fallings notwithstanding (not that anybody alive knows about them). She's upholding his legacy, she's making it known there's a Skywalker in the galaxy once again.
  • Especially since Ben Solo, the last Skywalker, gave his own life to save Rey's by Force-healing her. Almost everything she has, she owes to some member of the Skywalker family, be it Luke, Leia, Han, or Ben. Even Anakin was one of the Jedi who spoke to her during the fight with Emperor Palpatine, entrusting her to bring balance to the Force as he did.
    • Come to think of it, in a way they kinda got symbolically married with Ben, with the kiss and all. She's simply taking his name!

Why can't droids translate the Sith language, anyway?

• Just because it's a language mainly used by bad people doesn't mean being able to translate it wouldn't be a good thing, especially if the Republic and Jedi's main enemies use it (imagine how dumb it would be if, during World War 2, the Allies refused to translate German just because the Nazis used it.) And there's no implication that simply speaking or hearing Sith is dangerous.
  • Threepio was built, using off the shelf parts, waaaaay back in the Republic era when the Jedi were at the height of their powers. It isn't hard to imagine that they came up with some sort of hard coded stuff against translating Sith stuff and enforced it as a Galactic Standard as part of the whole purge of Sith memory. Plus, according to parts of the EU, some kinds of Sith speak are exactly that; words which can release dark spirits or cause damage just on their own.
  • So why wouldn't they remove the language from his memory altogether? It has to be easier and way safer than installing some kind of block that is so subtle that it prevents the droid from saying the words, but not from remembering the language and admitting he knows it. Also, there's no implication in the movies that Sith language is dangerous.
  • If a protocol droid didn't have Sith programmed in its memory banks, it might not recognize when it is trying to translate Sith for its master and do so by accident. There might also be situations that require proper authorities (which the Resistance, despite supporting the aims of the New Republic, was not, and didn't even exist when C3PO was built) to bypass this restriction, which might explain why C3PO remembered what he had read rather than purging it from his memory banks immediately.
  • You cannot accidentally translate from a language you don't know. You could maybe somehow learn a language without knowing what it is exactly, but not vice versa.
  • By accidentally translate, it means coming across some one who can translate the unknown language. Of course, knowing what the unknown language is probably make it easy to find someone who can translate it. But with them knowing that it is Sith, that probably provides some deterrent if they are not determined to know what it says.
  • Besides, 3PO can translate unfamiliar languages by extrapolating from similar or related languages he already knows. That's how he figured out how to talk to Ewoks: by picking up on similarities to another dialect. If Sith is related to any one of the millions of languages he knows, he - and presumably any other protocol droid - could indeed translate some Sith unwittingly if they didn't already have the means to recognize it as verboten.

Palpatine's Contengincy Plan

• With Palpatine's return, what was the point of his Contengincy Plan in "Aftermath" & Operation Cinder? Gallius Rax's entry in the Complete Monster page tells us that Palpatine did not want Rax to build it into the First Order, which contradicts this film which he made Snoke and is behind every action of the First Order. His plan was a galaxy-wide You Have Failed Me he inflicted on the empire in the case of his death (which happened of course). Also, he doesn't want to give the galaxy to anybody else unless he possesses someone. So why would he let the First Order be made if he didn't plan on being ressurected? Plus, if he didn't intend for the First Order to be made, why make Snoke in the first place?
  • Generation Tech posits that Operation Cinder was Palpatine's attempt to weaken the galaxy for his eventual return (which is moronic. Operation Cinder deliberately targeted loyal Imperial planets, and would have left virtually nothing left for him to rule if it had suceeded). It's pretty clear that the writer of this film didn't pay much attention or heed to the new EU, which is sort of excusable, since they're screenwriters, not Star Wars lore experts, and they were probably under a lot of pressure to fix everything people had complained about with previous movies, which unfortunately meant disregarding everything about them that they could get away with (i.e. what they alluded to, but didn't show, and the new EU explained).
  • It is possible Palpatine intended for Operation Cinder to burn everything in the specific case of his transferance failing outright. It didn't, but we know it was imperfect; Palpatine may not have regained his mind in time to stop his contingency plan from commencing.
    • Then Palpatine dropped the ball by having Operation Cinder activate immediately after his apparent death. The Empire was still in a pretty good position after Endor, so a delay of a few months in case there's some kind of delay in this untested process or miscommunication would have been an obviously invaluable pre-caution and cost almost nothing. Then again, so would a lot of things Palpatine failed to do during his reign. Overconfidence is his weakness, after all. (though by that logic, he probably wouldn't have made Operation Cinder in the first place, because he wasn't expecting to die soon and would have expected his ressurection to fail even less.)
    • In his defence, starting Operation Cinder immediately has the benefit of preventing his loyalists from growing too independent for carrying it out. After a few months, some of his forces would be destroyed by the Rebellion and/or infighting, while others might well decide to do their own thing as Moff Gideon kindly demonstrated. Moreover, Palpatine might have actually wanted to try and build an empire from grounds up as an intellectual challenge, so prematurely wiping out Galactic Empire might have been a feature in his eyes, not an oversight.
    • Operation Cinder, had it suceeded, would have killed all his loyalists, which is obviously a bigger problem than what losses the rebels or infighting could inflict in a few months, or the possibility that some might go rogue. And if he is concerned about some of his follower's loyalty, what makes him think they'd go through with such an insane order and not either turn on the rest of the Empire at once or pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here?
    • Killing all the loyalists was an intended feature, not a bug; its part of the Operation's very purpose. The Empire was designed around Palpatine's leadership/administrative skills, but the longer he cannot exert his influence over his servants the more likely their blind obedience would evaporate due to various factors. Besides, Palpatine almost certainly couldn't imagine being killed before the perfection of the transference's process; he probably made preparations for the Operation and then never spared it a thought afterwards.
    • It would make sense as a feature if Palpatine really did want to end the empire, but if not, it simply destroys all his resources and everything he'd actually rule over. Yes, there's a possibility that a not-insignificant portion of his forces would go rogue in the event of his death and not return to working under him if he returned a few months later, but Operation Cinder requires his men to be fanatically loyal enough to commit mass-suicide/genocide in his name, and his Final Order plan is largely reliant on his men (and their descendants) becoming loyal to him again after decades of his absensce. (sure, Snoke or later Kylo's cooperation could have eased the transition, but he's giving these people planet-destroying weapons, so he clearly has great confidence in his subordinates' loyalty) And if he needs to string his followers along for a few months, there's no reason he couldn't have the same mechanisms that ordered Operation Cinder give other, less destructive orders to buy time. If he hadn't implemented Operation Cinder before his death and returned as soon as possible, all odds were he'd simply still have an empire and wouldn't need any of this shadow-plotting and new conquests. Plus, as detailed here, Operation Cinder, even failing early on as it did, effectively doomed his Final Order plan to fail, because it destroyed most of his forces and loyalty amongst the galaxy, meaning his "rule" of the galaxy would consist entirely of his fleet of planet-destroying ships (if he could even staff them,) which is not a remotely feasible way to rule a galaxy for a number of reasons. The "self-imposed challenge" idea makes a degree of internal sense, but is clearly at odds with Palpatine's approach to and desires of ruling, and the Sith's general goal of ruling the galaxy, not a few hundred post-apocalyptic planets.
    • The Dark Side has a tendency to warp Sith's intentions and ruling the surviving planets would still make Palpatine the ruler of all the galaxy in practice. Also, we are talking about a man who was so chronically obsessed with blowing up planets that he commissioned 4 increasingly potent superweapons despite their sheer impracticality (and their inevitable destruction wasting all the effort and the resources of his factions). Moreover, the very same guy once deliberately leaked vital information to the Rebellion in order to crush them in a seemingly foolproof trap, only for the good guys to defy his foresight and calculations to the point of his plan being a total failure. In all the likelyhood, Palpatine truly didn't think that Operation Cinder could commence with him still being reversibly dead. Besides, Operation Cinder works to his advantage in that neither Luke nor Rebellion would think he'd do something so counterproductive without being truly gone.

[[folder: Why not have the ships wait in orbit?]]The Star Destroyers shields don't work in Exegol's atmosphere due to the constant lighting discharges, which allows the Resistance to destroy them. Why not just have them parked in orbit above the planet so they can turn on thier shields?

• It’s said that the navigation tower the Resistance also targeted was needed to leave the planet. Sure, they could rise out of the ground but there were so many and Exegol is so chaotic that all of them would need some of kind of guide to get off the planet without destroying each other, much less get it in orbit.
  • And? Ok, let's be insanely generous and assume that for some reason they cannot simply go up - that they must follow some specific course to the orbit, maybe to avoid the the dangeours clouds or whatnot. How is it possible that in a day only the flagship left (and then returned) and all others simply hung in place? Palpatine declared the sixteen hour countdown before the full scale assault, and yet he cannot get more than one ship to orbit in that time?

Why not put a navigation tower on every star destroyer?

When the good guys try to destroy the one on the ground, the Final Order turns it off and turn on the one on Pryde's star destroyer (which eventually gets destroyed.) Why not just put one on all of them? There's no way the nav towers are more expensive than the star destoyers themselves (which there seem to be hundreds.)

• It could be that putting multiple towers would cause interference with the signal, or too much data flow. Plus, it may have been a case of expense. They could afford that many ships, but that took a lot of resources, and they may not have had enough to build more control ships without risking exposure.

  • The interference signal issue is easily solved by just having one activated at a time. And as for exposure; clearly not an issue considering everything they've not just built, but invented, and therefore we know they have foolproof methods of moving large materials. Sure, there's always the possibility that the next invention or addition, no matter how relatively small, would cause exposure, but it'd be highly unlikely in universe, and is never indicated in the film.

  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup. It's a common trope in the franchise.

Knights of Ren's battle tactics

• While they were arguably non-important tertiary characters in the grand scheme of thing, I've still noticed that near the end, all the Knights face Kylo to kill him as a group. However, as I've read on this very site, in their character sheet, at least two of them used, respectively, a sniper rifle and flamethrower (again, pointing out that Kylo bothers to take them out first). On the one hand, Kylo was disarmed, but he's still a Dark Jedi with powers to be wary of. So why did the two knights with ranged weapons got so close anyway? What really stopped the sniper knight to stay somewhere in the back and try to shoot Kylo from far away while Kylo was distracted by the others fighting melee? Yes, again, they're relatively unimportant characters but still are introduced as some sort of ominous Praetorian Guard close to Kylo Ren and possibly his closest lackeys (at least until his Heel–Face Turn), making them go down like Mooks honestly feels like a waste.
  • The Knights of Ren share one thing with their leader. They're arrogant bullies who THINK they're the best. Seeing Kylo without the lightsaber, they get cocky and go in for the kill without thinking things through.

How does the Resistance fleet fly into Exegol?

• Both Kylo Ren and Rey have to do some fancy flying in fighter-sized craft through a dangerous cloud in order to make it to Exegol. Later, a huge fleet of Resistance warships just drops in. Does the cloud not exist any more?
  • It could be that larger craft can more effectively cut through the cloud (more shielding, thicker armor with extra reinforcement, more mass, etc). Think how waves that could absolutely wreck a small boat do very little to something the size of an aircraft carrier.
    • But then why are the Star Destroyers trapped with the nav-beacon destroyed?

Red Five

• Why is Luke's X-Wing callsign still Red Five? By the time of The Empire Strikes Back, he had been promoted to Rogue Leader.
  • Perhaps between the end of Rot J and his leaving to try and bring the Jedi back, he resigned the position of Rogue Leader, retaining Red 5 as the call sign for his X Wing as his designation in case he was needed on active duty again. Or Rogue Squadron was decommissioned by New Republic leadership and redesignated (Poe's Black Squadron fills a similar role, but it could be that they're assigned to other wings unless specifically needed for special operations)

Kylo Ren is Dead?

• It’s very obvious why Kylo turned on Palpatine (if only because it makes no sense he’d align with him in the first place, see above); Kylo has no more interest in playing second-fiddle to Palpatine than he did Snoke. But what convinces him to give up his desire for Galactic domination? Rey force-heals him… after she spent a whole movie trying and failing to redeem him, so her (occasional) love for him clearly can’t sway him. Han appears to him, and reminds Ben of what Leia stood for; after Ben watched the New Republic get blown up and helped destroy the Resistance fleet (Leia would have died there if not for Plot Armor), so while unlike Vader, we never got the impression Kylo thought what he did was morally right, he clearly doesn’t care, or even hates what his parents stood for. I’m not saying he should use the Sunk-Cost fallacy or is “beyond redemption,” but Han, Leia and Rey do absolutely nothing to him that hasn’t already failed to redeem him, but suddenly he’s saying he wants to redeem himself, but doesn’t think he’s strong enough (even though previously, his strength of will was part of the issue; he didn’t emotionally want to kill Han or Leia, but he did it anyways because, in the long term, he wanted power more)?
  • This is just one interpretation, but above all else, it could be because a lot of the things that inspired Ben's turn to darkness were ultimately recontextualized to some degree. I suspect Ben at least partially suffers from the You Can't Fight Fate line of thinking, where going off of his idolization of Darth Vader, once everything fell apart for him, he just assumed that turning to the Dark Side was his destiny, as his grandfather had done. We don't know the details of him being manipulated by Snoke, but the thing that really set Ben off was when Luke apparently tried to kill him in his sleep. So that must mean Luke sees him as a lost cause and would totally slaughter him again if given the chance? Well, no, because when Luke shows up in The Last Jedi, rather than put up a fight, all he does is buy time for the Resistance to escape. OK, but Rey turns out to have been Palpatine's granddaughter, so if Ben gets her angry enough, he can project off of her turning to prove that they were both victims of their family legacy, retroactively validating the path he's chosen, right? Well, no, Rey actually heals Ben after running him through with a lightsaber when she could've just let him die, refusing to let herself succumb to the Dark Side and clinging to the hope that he can still be saved too. Alright, fine, but Ben's parents must hate him by now, so he could never show his face in front of them, right? I mean, he says this to Rey directly, right? Right?! Actually, no, Han and Leia's last moments before death were spent trying to reach out to their son and convince him it wasn't too late. I think that all these things combined were what convinced Ben that he could still do the right thing, if he was strong enough. Even if you look to his idolization of his grandfather, Vader died as Anakin Skywalker, having been redeemed by the love for his son who believed in him. If Ben was still struggling to shed what he perceived to be his family legacy, that might've been the final nail in the coffin proving it was possible.
    • I don't want to get into a war of Alternate Character Interpretation, but none of those seem to really hold water. Yes, we don't know the full details of Snoke's seduction of Kylo (we supposedly saw some of it in the comics, but I haven't read them, and this film contradicts them in a few ways,) but Snoke obviously offered Ben something he wanted. Remember, according to Luke, who's almost certainly more honest about events than Ben, he ignited his saber because he'd saw Ben had already turned, not that he would later. And Ben really thought it was his destiny to fall to the dark side because he was related to Darth Vader... like Luke and Leia were? He'd canonically known from day 1 that Luke redeemed Vader himself. Luke spared him? Luke wasn't even really there, but still took action against him be saving the people Kylo wanted dead and humiliating him in front of his men. He thought his parents would hate him? They'd been trying to reach out to him for two movies. And ultimately, so what if he knows it is physically possible for him not to be a mass murdering tyrant and constantly risk his life to get more power? He wants power and the few times he's had to kill people he knew personally to get it, he had the strength to do so.
  • Of course, could be we're overthinking all this. The Dark Side throws a monkey wrench into discussions of character motivation and morality. Could be that it served as an external force pushing him down the mass-murdering tyrant path, and thus nothing he did as "Kylo Ren," whether risking his life, killing strangers or the people he loved, required anything but him not having the strength to overcome its will, and he knew others had the will to overcome it at various points, he just wasn't sure if he did. Then his parent's final appeal to him finally worked because...

Rejecting the Palpatine name

• The obvious answer is obvious... Rejecting the name "Palpatine" helps to distance Rey from the evil Emperor Palpatine and all that. But isn't it a theme of the movie that the worst parts of your family legacy aren't what defines you? Apparently, Rey's father was not only a Palpatine as well, but an actual (albeit imperfect) clone of the Emperor himself, yet Rey does believe that he did good by trying to protect her from her grandfather. And then there's any legacy the Palpatine family might've had before Sheev came along, as well.
  • Going around using the name of the most evil man in galactic history is something she'd want to avoid.
    • This. If someone was named, say, "Renata Hitler", she would presumably change her name, even if she was the nicest person on the planet.
  • In addition, refusing to parade around touting the Palpatine name doesn't mean Rey isn't interested in any lineage from before the Emperor. She could do some digging into her biological family history while still styling herself as a Skywalker; it's almost like adoption, in that regard.
  • Emperor Palpatine also did grievous harms to the Skywalker family in particular. He turned Anakin the dark side, which led to Padme's death, robbed the Skywalker twins of their father, turned Leia's son to the dark side by creating Snoke, forcing Luke and Leia to expend their lives to save him, and then made it a point to kill Ben when he showed up on Exegol. And despite this, Luke, Leia, Han, Ben, and even Anakin embraced Palpatine's own granddaughter as a family member and as the next Jedi. It would've been extremely disrespectful to all their legacies to have taken the family name of the man who'd harmed them all so much after that.
  • In addition, though it’s unknown if Rey is aware of the specifics like this, her father was actually a failed cloning experiment using some of Palpatine’s genetic material — not just a child of his, in the biological sense. In terms of personal identity, her ties to the Palpatine name are only as substantiated as those of the prequel-era clone troopers to Jango Fett.

Why didn't Palpatine make an army of Snokes?

• From what we see, Snoke is almost as powerful as a real Sith Lord. So why didn't Palpatine make an army of Snokes with his clone factory? Seems like that would be a lot more effective than just turning random people into Slave Mooks.
  • Not sure if the new canon has come down on this, but in Legends, cloning Force-Sensitives isn't terribly easy. Joruus C'baoth was insane, Luuke was just an extension of him, and Rham Kota insists cloning a Jedi is impossible (the game shows it isn't, but the vast majority of Starkiller clones were warped and unimpressive). Snoke may have been so physically twisted because cloning a Force-Sensitive is just that hard, and the rejects were completely nonviable. Snoke may be powerful with the Force, but his twisted physicality makes him very poorly suited to face-to-face confrontations, as Ben proved in The Last Jedi.
  • Is it possible to ensure that an army of Snoke clones would be knowingly loyal to Palpatine? If Rey's father was able to stand against him, despite being a clone of himself, what reason would an army of powerful Force users have to take orders from some decrepit old zombie on life support?
  • The malformed specimen in the tubes could be indicating that he was trying and failing to replicate his one and only success - the Snoke we saw.

How does Han come back as a Force ghost?

• The "rules" of the Force seem to say that you have to be Force-sensitive to come back a Force ghost (as he's the only example that isn't), so what gives?
  • The vision of Han that appears to Ben isn't a Force ghost. You can tell he's not meant to be because he actually looks like a real, flesh-and-blood person standing there, without the blue aura or anything. Rather, he's just a memory/figment of Ben's imagination that helps him embrace his Heel–Face Turn. Han himself isn't really present, in any form, just Ben envisioning what he might say to him in that moment.

Why Does Beaumont Kin refer to cloning as "secrets only the Sith knew?"

• Has he not heard of a little thing called the Clone Wars? Even given that it happened about 60 years ago by this point, he's a historian, so it's like if a real life historian today didn't know anything about World War 2.
  • His exact words were "Dark science, cloning, secrets only the Sith knew", so presumably he was referring to the three items as separate theories.
  • He's spitballing. He's spewing out random ideas that all came to him in a rush as a response to those horrifying news. He's shocked and frightened, and is therefore not exactly in a mood for coherent and eloquent statements. Still, he's trying to express that he thinks cloning AND some kind of dark arts (i.e. mind/soul transfer) might be involved, if it's THE Emperor who's returned, and not just some bloke who looks like him.

Rey knowing they needed the dagger

• While they’re rescuing Chewie from Ben’s ship, Rey suddenly has an epiphany that the dagger will be important later, which she only attributes to “a feeling”. I know this essentially refers to the Force or something, which is referenced when Finn uses the same explanation during the battle at Exegol, but they already have reason to believe the dagger is important. The last line of the Sith translation is something like “This dagger leads…” Why didn’t she explain that as her reasoning instead of being vague?
  • The explanation was unnecessary and irrelevant. She could have just said, “Get Chewie, I’ll get the dagger and meet you at the hangar,” and that would have been that. Given that she did choose to explain, the three-word “Just a feeling” explanation makes more sense under the circumstances than a more involved and time-consuming explanation. Nobody’s going to question “Just a feeling” from such a strong Force user.

How does Luke's ghost know that Palpatine was Darth Sidious?

• Obi-wan and Yoda never told him in the Original Trilogy (for the obvious reason that Palpatine's backstory hadn't been written yet,) so how did he find out?
  • There are a myriad of ways he could have found out, but given Luke is dead during this movie the simplest answer is that he learned it from one of the other Force Ghosts.
  • He also referred to him as Darth Sidious in the last movie, when he was still alive, so maybe he found out in between trilogies when searching for artifacts related to the Force.

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