Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker capped off Disney’s sequel trilogy and answered – for better or worse, depending on who you ask – questions that were being asked since The Force Awakens.
However, many questions went unanswered altogether. One of these questions being how in the galaxy did Emperor Palpatine survive the events of Return of the Jedi? After all, being thrown into the bottom of the Death Star and getting subsequently blown up should be enough to eliminate the most powerful of Sith, right?
Well, the answer is out there – but don’t think you’ll learn it anytime soon. In a recent HuffPost interview with The Rise of Skywalker editor Maryann Brandon claims that scenes explaining this mystery were cut to save time and so as not to “clutter” the film.
While there was more information explaining why Palpatine is still alive at the beginning of the film, according to Brandon, “it seemed to go off-topic”. “There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on,” she continued, “I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know”.
Whether this deleted material will show up in an extended version of The Rise of Skywalker or on the DVD’s special features remains to be seen.
Brandon answered other questions in the interview including: why did Kylo and Rey kiss? The movie ‘told’ the filmmakers if it was the right thing to do. Why did Kylo Ren die? Because he used up his life force to save Rey. Why was Snoke revealed as a clone? Because they thought the visual effect would be fun for the audience to work it out themselves when the ‘Snoke’ clones are in their tubes.
