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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.



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 Palps 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.



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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. I like the ludicrous RedLetterMedia theory that 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, I thought 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.



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 Palps 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.



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. 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 Palps, 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". 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" - I was responding 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 Palps 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 Palps 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 Palps broadcasting from the secret Sith planet accessibly only via a Sith artifact guarded by Sith cultists... as little sense it makes for Palps 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 Palps specifically ordered Kylo to kill her. If, by your own logic, Kylo thinks Palps is stronger than Snoke (who'd effortlessly swatted Rey aside), then what help could she possibly be? Another distraction? I can imagine that conversation: "P: Ren, why are you dragging this girl to me alive? K: U-uh, I wanted to kill her in front of you so that you could enjoy her death! P: Nope, already burned on that with your grandpa, not falling (he-he) for that trick again! Kill her right now! K: *ck!" 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 Equals Authority (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. And all of this arguing assumes that Kylo is supposed to be a logical, all-knowing, smart guy. This is Kylo we are talking about here. That or What an Idiot!? is in play.



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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. I suspect 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.



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, 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 Palps 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.



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. I don't know if the writers intended that, but personally I really like this interpretation. Yes, because 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 - I always saw it 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.



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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. Though I must admit I'm not still satisfied with this answer... 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. I always saw Anakin's bringing "balance" as being 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.



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. I thought 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 I don't think he created 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, I think that 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 Palps 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? I suspect 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 . I'm pretty sure 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 I suspect 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? I think 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 make sense for either a declaration of love, an announcement of being her long-lost brother, or a confession about some major misdeed. And since the former two are unlikely, it was so obviously the former, that I have no idea why they even bothered to deny it or why they decided to sink the NRS "Reynn" to begin with.



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. I actually interpreted it as being 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. (Also, I like to think that 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. But as for bothering to help his enemies, I got nothing about that. 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 rate 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. I think 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. I would like to add I don't get why they couldn't just shut him down and download the data right out of his brain (even if he has a lifetime worth of memories I would think 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.



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 Kill 'Em All 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.



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.



Hyperspace tracking on TI Es?

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 TI Es 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.



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. I'm guessing the "cave" (which I assume 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. I feel like this reaction is getting way overanalysed and, well, overreacted to. 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.



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?". I admit 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.



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 - I guess 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 I can think of (in a universe of Space Wizards, but I digress)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.

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?

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?

I get 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.



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.



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. I mean 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.



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, 