I don’t know the name of the song, but it’s the same holiday music as Home Alone. That’s already a good sign.
Despite Life Day clearly being Christmas, the original Holiday Special was released for Thanksgiving. Thus, November.
One of the strangest moments of my life was when my dad mentioned in passing that he had watched the Star Wars Holiday Special. As in, on TV, the one time it was ever officially shown.
Hey, I'm old enough to have watched it. I was 13 at the time. Even then, I wasn't expecting a Variety Show to get into my Star Wars.
Anyway, I watched the new one and... it's okay. Quite honestly, Robot Chicken already did it.
Word Of Every God Imaginable confirmed that after the movie was out though, and if you've been told about it, the only way you can't see it in the movie is if you need him to say the words "I can feel the Force" out loud.
Edited by BadWolf21 on Nov 18th 2020 at 12:40:10 PM
Yes, but you'd think they would confirm it in an actual canon bit of media first before letting a LEGO parody do it instead. The vast majority of the viewing audience doesn't follow Word of God, after all.
I don't recall him ever doing anything with the force in the film, at least not explicitly. There's a lot of vague stuff, followed by the Word of God having to come in later and say "yeah, that means he's actually strong in the force."
TROS was very much a movie that preferred to hint at but not confirm character details.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 18th 2020 at 11:49:16 AM
That wasn't really a hint or foreshadowing, though, since at the time Lucas had no intention of having Leia actually be Luke's sister (his initial plan was for the other Skywalker to be a separate character, before he composited half of his second trilogy plans into ROTJ). The intention was probably for that to be Luke's doing entirely, not Leia needing to be special for her to hear him.
So it's more of a coincidence that panned out from later retcons. Our first indication that Leia has the force is still Luke finding out about if from Yoda in ROTJ.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Nov 18th 2020 at 11:56:31 AM
Still, Return of the Jedi did have Luke explicitly tell Leia she has the Force.
I put the end of ESB thing as the same sort of happy accident as ANH Obi-Wan's hesitation.
My AO3Preface: This comment made me fall down a bit of a rabbit hole.
Unless it was mentioned in one of the other Lego Star Wars movies/series, no.
But that's not terribly surprising. If we're talking solely about onscreen appearances — taking print out of the equation — then Palpatine has barely shown up in anything since his first name was revealed in late 2014. He appeared a couple times in the last few episodes of Rebels, he shows up to issue Order 66 in The Clone Wars and Jedi: Fallen Order, a recording of him triggers Operation: Cinder in Battlefront II, and I'm pretty sure it's just The Rise of Skywalker after that. Outside of canon, all there really is for non-print appearances is Lego Star Wars so again, if no one namedropped "Sheev" in any of those, it's never come up.
Very few people are on a first-name basis with the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic/Galactic Emperor in the first place. Out of universe, it took 31 years before any source gave him a first name. Even if you take the prequels into account, there's still a nine year gap between George Lucas being done with the character and any Expanded Universe author bothering to giving him a first name, and I have to assume that was intentional on their part. As far as I'm aware, not giving Palpatine a first name was not one of George's edicts about the EU. There was even a whole novel from the point of view of his Sith master and the closest we got to a name reveal was "he used to have one, but he never uses it anymore." Given that Darth Plagueis was written by the same author who only two years later would finally give him a first name in Tarkin, it was probably the case that it could no longer be avoided. The idea that you could have a whole book from the perspective of one of the Empire's most senior military officers, whose service dates back to the Clone Wars, in which he interacts directly with the Emperor, and his name would be completely avoided was probably untenable.
The weirdest thing about that is that the first four or five novels released in the new canon, which included Tarkin, were clearly written with the intent that they would be part of what would become known as Legends continuity. And probably so was Rebels, at least in the early stages. The lead time on both novels and television animation are too long for them to have been completely planned post-acquisition by Disney. A New Dawn is a Rebels prelude, Tarkin is a character study an Original Trilogy character, Heir to the Jedi is the third part of a loose trilogy whose first two parts are now part of a different continuity, and Lords of the Sith is a dive into Darth Vader's relationship with Darth Sidious. Dark Disciple is more definitely written to be canon, but only in that it is based on unproduced episodes of The Clone Wars and probably would have been released regardless of rebooting continuity. Outside of maybe the first one, none of these scream "bold new direction."
I don't know how much notice James Luceno might have had that the novel he was working on was going to be one of the first in a new continuity. But I have a feeling the answer is "not much." It might seem like Palpatine finally being given a first name was supposed to be some big "new continuity, new rules" reveal, but I think it's more likely that after three decades of the Emperor having just one name, including three movies and a TV series before he even was the Emperor, Palpatine was going to have his first name casually mentioned in a random standalone novel, and that's...kind of hilarious.

EDIT: Pagetopper. I was referring to the trailer for the LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special.
Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Nov 5th 2020 at 7:31:03 AM