Will a novel or comic focus on the Palpatine revelations?

[ChrisIII]

Right now there's the Kylo Ren comic that fleshes out the character's downfall and his early relationship with Snoke and the Knights. It's not over yet but presumably will end with him properly joining the First Order, with Luke probably telling Han and Leia the bad news before going to his exile.



With all the Palpatine stuff that happened in ROS I think there's probably going to be some EU that's going to flesh that out much like the comic is building on the bits of Kylo's origin revealed in TFA and TLJ (and to a much lesser extent ROS). "Prince of the Empire" could make for an interesting title IMO.


Of course number one is his survival. Is he, like in Dark Empire, in a clone body? Or were his remains somehow recovered from the DS wreckage, possibly by Ochi (Who obviously knew where the wreckage was with the dagger), and taken to Exegol? Also, why he waited, created Snoke, etc and what role he had in influencing Ben through Snoke, and also unanswered questions about the Sith Eternal, who seemed partially distinct from the FO at first.

But most importantly, his family. Going by the actor's age and Rey's own presumably his son was probably born around the time of SOLO or REBELS, where the Empire was pretty much at the height of it's power and hadn't really faced an organized rebellion yet. Also did Palpatine raise him before he presumably fled to Jakku? Was Vader aware of his existence etc?

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Probably.

I could see Rey's dad holding a comic or something.

[Immortal Weapon]

The novelization of Rise of Skywalker has it taken care of. The Palpatine shown in the film is a clone, his son is a failed clone who didn't inherit his force sensitivity. Rey in actuality is his daughter/granddaughter. God, fan faction sounds better than what we actually got.

[SuperiorIronman]

In a way it's all starting to make sense what happened here at least from what I can speculate.
Lucasfilm/Disney probably had some reservations regarding Treverrows scripts and during the time this was written he was probably locked in if not in talks with Universal to do Jurassic World Dominion. And so if his heart wasn't in it and he was getting distracted by a franchise he had more of a stake in, it's probably why he left he the project. Palpatine from what I can find was in the former script, though as a recording so either way Ian Mcdiaramid was reprising the role even if it was for a cameo.

So enter JJ Abrams who has to develop a script. Treverrow left and in a year or less has to develop a script (they began filming in July of 2018 for a 2019 release, Colin is gone by September of 2017). Frankly with everything that'd happened considering that this was after the initial directors for Solo went off the reservation and scripting conflicts led a to a director being removed, they have to put something out. So whatever Abrams has they have to go with. Then it comes down the merchandise. Things like books, toys, games, or whatever tend to be developed a year out so the novelization having details not in the film makes a degree of sense. It's adapted either from an earlier script if not the one they worked with. So the novelization having the clone details starts to raise a few questions as to why this wasn't in the film.
My suspicion is that it's a mixture of pacing as much as it just didn't read well. These films have flashbacks so it's not out of the question that it was shot or at least planned to have this moment where we see how Palpatine survived. As such it getting changed to Palpatine just using the darkside to survive and letting his corpse of a body speak for itself would draw attention away to what we had seen of his clone body.

So it probably just didn't read well and was left in the novelization because it's what the story group had to work with and you need to fill out page space. While I don't expect Kennedy to know about the comics, I suspect Abrams did and had ended up adapting parts of Trevverows script, as much as he was pulling from other sources in order to just make a script happen. So that's probably why this adapts (to a degree) Dark Empire as much as it's overcompensating for TLJ. I'm wondering if Kennedy's comments about a lack of source material is her attempting to distance herself from this.

In a way I'd kind of have to agree on the fan-fiction comment as Disney/Lucasfilm likely overreacted in the wake of Solo and the conflicts with Treverrow. Although it's weird that they actually adapted a part of the EU and it's one that has become mocked for them even bothering and continuing to build on it.
Though this probably bodes well for the follow-up considering that later Sith/Villains did much better. Though it'll be interesting if they adapt the Vong next in all its Hellraiser glory.

[Vegeta]

The novelization of Rise of Skywalker has it taken care of. The Palpatine shown in the film is a clone, his son is a failed clone who didn't inherit his force sensitivity. Rey in actuality is his daughter/granddaughter. God, fan faction sounds better than what we actually got.

Much of the reactions I am seeing online seem to not like the novelization's "retcon" (since the visual dictionary seemed to indicate that the Sith cultists had simply "resurrected" him) so I am sure we will see several more books or comics down the line either trying to elaborate on this version of the story or retcon the retcon. If there IS one consistent train of thought at Lucasfilm nowadays, it's that they feel the need to double or triple down on their bad mistakes instead of just washing their hands of the whole affair.

[ChrisIII]

So if Rey's father is a clone, I guess it's possible he was growth-accelerated and could've been "born" after ROTJ.

Wonder if it'll go further with what exactly Palpatine's plans were with Snoke and the first Order.

[Immortal Weapon]

Much of the reactions I am seeing online seem to not like the novelization's "retcon" (since the visual dictionary seemed to indicate that the Sith cultists had simply "resurrected" him) so I am sure we will see several more books or comics down the line either trying to elaborate on this version of the story or retcon the retcon. If there IS one consistent train of thought at Lucasfilm nowadays, it's that they feel the need to double or triple down on their bad mistakes instead of just washing their hands of the whole affair.

I don't think the novelization retcon the visual dictionary. Cloning is the method of resurrection they chose.

[WebLurker]

The novelization of Rise of Skywalker has it taken care of. The Palpatine shown in the film is a clone, his son is a failed clone who didn't inherit his force sensitivity. Rey in actuality is his daughter/granddaughter. God, fan faction sounds better than what we actually got.

Honestly, it's pretty true to the franchise. (Admittedly, the franchise as it existed in the mid-'90s and when some of the worst stuff was being made, but still...)

Not sure I like what we're learning about the novelization, but eh.

[thwhtGuardian]

I kind of hope it's the kind of thing that just gets forgotten and stories just move on with out mentioning it. I'm not saying retcon it with something else, just treat it as something non-important and move on with new adventures with Rey that aren't focused on her past.

[Immortal Weapon]

Honestly, it's pretty true to the franchise. (Admittedly, the franchise as it existed in the mid-'90s and when some of the worst stuff was being made, but still...)

Not sure I like what we're learning about the novelization, but eh.

The only material I'm aware that covered something like this is Force Unleashed 2 with Star Killer being a clone and his force sensitivity made him unstable. Stuff like this should have stayed in legends

[SuperiorIronman]

The only material I'm aware that covered something like this is Force Unleashed 2 with Star Killer being a clone and his force sensitivity made him unstable. Stuff like this should have stayed in legends

It's more the broad strokes of the problem.
All clones had to deal with their donor's memories via flash training resulting in many of them going crazy being unable to differentiate between themselves and Galen Marek. Starkiller had this issue as a number of his fellow clones whereas the Dark Apprentice and Maulkiller didn't. Maulkiller was just bloodthirsty and so was euthanized for being a loose cannon.
The clones who weren't successful also seems to have possessed various "birth defects" where they'd been created physically deformed which resulted from the clones being pumped out too fast. Force sensitivity would affect this as Vader was trying to recreate Galen as he was and the force manifested itself in the clones at different levels sometimes being detrimental to the individual as some clones endured burns from attempting lightning. The cloners having little to go off of had trouble recreating this as much as its been hinted that the force works against this sort of thing.

[thwhtGuardian]

The only material I'm aware that covered something like this is Force Unleashed 2 with Star Killer being a clone and his force sensitivity made him unstable. Stuff like this should have stayed in legends

They did unstable clones and mind transfers in Dark Empire long before Force Unleashed and as the clones in that were specifically clones of Palpatine that's definitely the source.

[WebLurker]

The only material I'm aware that covered something like this is Force Unleashed 2 with Star Killer being a clone and his force sensitivity made him unstable. Stuff like this should have stayed in legends

The Dark Empire comics (the OG Palpantine clone story), for one. The GeNodes from that Battlefields instruction book. Everything about clones before the preuqels.

The '90s were a strange time for the franchise.

[Sacred Knight]

Sadly other media, instead of a supplement, has become a crutch when it comes to Star Wars movies. Its not all Disney's fault, this was starting to happen with the prequels. But yeah, the important Palpatine stuff will definitely be told in a comic, novel, or animated adaptation of some kind. It makes me wonder if in the future they should indeed just stick to these other forms of media outside of feature films, because so many pertinent details get left out of the movies just to be told elsewhere.

I mean, when you have to wait for a novel just to be told that Palpatine's body in TROS was a clone, then you know there's a big problem with their reliance on other media outside of movies to tell their movie's story. Their excuse of time doesn't wash in that regard, as literally a five second clip of exposition would have gotten that job done.

[Immortal Weapon]

Sadly other media, instead of a supplement, has become a crutch when it comes to Star Wars movies.

That is nowhere near as bad as putting plot relevant material in a product that's completely unrelated to Star Wars. Who's idea was it to put Palpatine's return speech mentioned on the opening crawl of RoS on goddamn Fortnite? That speech is what kicks off the movie's plot.