...and it's really bad from the filmmakers' perspective to not at least hint at any of this within the films themself.So before and after the release of TFA, The Aftermath trilogy of books was released. In these books, Palpatines 'contingency' was discussed. This involved the search of some origin of the dark side in the unknown regions (Exegol). He set up observatories and scientific facilities on outer region planets, one being Jakku. This is established in flashback chapters that take place pre-empire.Around the same time, The Lando Calrissian comic book was released which covered a heist of Palpatine's luxury space yacht. Within this yacht, there were Sith artifacts that essentially possess those who touch them.This aspect was further explored down the line in the Vader comics where Palpatine gifts Vader a mask from his collection. This mask once belonged to a sith lord who was good at architecture or something( I read these comics at least a year ago so bear with me on that).The mask possessed its wearers with the consciousness of this sith lord who subsequently designed Vaders castle.He didn't do this out of kindness as you would imagine and was essentially using Vader to open a portal at this force locus akin to the world between worlds and inhabit his old force-sensitive body and resume his dastardly activities. Vader wanted to use this portal to save Padme etc. As you might guess none of this worked out.I would now quickly like to point out that The Last Jedi visual dictionary asserts that the ring Snoke wears is an obsidian rock from Mustafar containing old dark side inscriptions.But what does all this establish? Well...A) Palpatine is fully aware of a sith ability to retain their consciousness within an object.B) Palpatine was tampering with dark science.C) Palpatine had been searching for Exegol when he was still Chancellor of The Republic. It was always part of his long-game.D) Palpatine was very aware of all the dark siders who had come before him.So if we put all these canonically established facts together, what reasonable conclusion can be drawn?Palpatine had always had it in his mind that he may be betrayed by Vader in some way and was planning for it.He had finally found Exegol in the unknown regions and set up a scientific facility that used its strength in the dark side to conduct experiments with cloning force-sensitive beings. Chiefly Palpatine himself, but also others.He performed a Sith ritual on a set of his infamous sithy robes and delegated them as the object he could use to transfer his consciousness onto a new body.The cloning process was not perfected yet and he could not enter into an exact fully-formed version of himself, so he had to grow a new Palpatine from scratch, meaning a child who would need to have 20 odd years growing into an adult Palpatine before the essence transfer could occur.Unfortunately for Palpatine, the first successful clone was not force sensitive and therefore not a candidate for transfer. Further down the line, this clone would father a force-sensitive child.In the short term, this left Palpatine turning to Luke as the next alternative if he could get him to strike Palpatine down in anger. Vader was half-machine and of no interest to Palpatine with regards to the essence transfer post ROTS. This did not work out either.Vader did indeed betray Palpatine leaving him no other alternative than to inhabit what essentially is a husk of meat not strong enough to properly contain his immense power and only sustained his life with hundreds of scientific experts working around the clock to sustain him on a very elaborate life support machine using dark science on an extremely force sensitive planet.This forced him into playing the long game again and letting things play out with the Skywalker bloodline.Once he caught wind of the impending birth of Ben Solo, he knew he did not yet have the reach to manipulate that situation on his own. He needed a puppet to take control of the Imperial remnants and elicit disharmony of some kind, no matter how small, whilst he built up his final order on Exegol and find a being powerful enough to inhabit himself.Enter Snoke.Palpatine knew of a powerful dark sider who would fit the bill. This being left its consciousness in a ring that had a fragment of Mustafarian rock placed within it. Though powerful, Snokes knowledge of the dark side was not nearly as immense as Palpatine's.This meant Snokes essence could be contained through a scientifically engineered vessel, though it would deteriorate rapidly and need to be constantly re-engineered to maintain Snoke's existence. This would explain the extensive scarring and decayed appearance of Snoke. Palpatine knew that Snoke had enough power and knowledge that he would draw the imperial remnants to him and gain leadership of The First Order.Snoke could sow chaos and fear around the galaxy once again until Palpatine no longer felt the need to renew Snoke's physical form and take control himself. He knew that Snoke focused more on theatricality and flamboyance than a will to uniformly control a galaxy. The First Order was a toy to Snoke, one he could use to engage in cruel and manipulative acts whenever he wanted for his own amusement.He turned Ben because he knew he could. He took power for the sake of it. This is clearly his mentality when you read his thoughts in the excellent TLJ novelization. Kylo was an amusing experiment that backfired on Snoke.Palpatine knew Snoke had done his work for him in turning Ben and suspected Kylo had fully given into darkness when he killed Snoke. He knew that both Kylo and Rey were excellent candidates for the essence transfer and his time for re-emergence drew near. Kylo would either kill Rey, turn Rey, or Rey would give into the darkness and kill Kylo. Palpatine has his new vessel either way.Enter the story of The Rise Of Skywalker.I've had to piece this together using canonical material outside of the actual films. I quite enjoy the sequel trilogy, but the fact that none of this was at least hinted at within the films themselves is crazy bad. They clearly had some semblance of a plan as this was ancillary material some of which came before even The Force Awakens. All of it came before The Rise of Skywalker.It actually adds up when you factor in the outcome of the sequel trilogy.If you wanted the Snoke/Palpatine storyline to make sense you had to piece it together like a puzzle and spend $100 plus on books.There's also a whole rant I could go on about how Palpatine's actions in the final third around the force dyad were quite confusing but that's a whole other post.This lockdown has given me way too much spare time. via /r/StarWars https://ift.tt/3cQW7HC
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