Palpatine’s plan in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is quite confounding, but a new Star Wars book sheds light on why he wanted Kylo Ren to kill Rey. Leading up to The Rise of Skywalker‘s first trailer, there wasn’t a hint suggesting Palpatine’s return. He died at the end of Return of the Jedi, and while various Star Wars novels and comics had discussed Palpatine’s contingency plan for when the Empire would fall, the idea that he would return as the big bad wasn’t properly set up.

The Rise of Skywalker explained in some fashion that Palpatine’s Sith Eternal resurrected him in a clone body and simultaneously established his Final Order, a Sith-based armada that succeeded the fledging First Order, at some point after the conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy. But beyond that, Palpatine’s plan was three-fold; first, he wanted Kylo Ren to kill Rey when he found him on Exegol. Then he wanted Rey to strike him down and absorb the spirits of all the Sith. Lastly, when Kylo Ren and Rey formed a Force Dyad, he wanted to use their bond to rejuvenate his clone body. Overall, it seemed like Palpatine was merely going with the flow, but there’s at least an explanation for his first action.

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In the book Secrets of the Sith, which is written from Palpatine’s perspective and discusses the origins, history, and future of the Sith Order in great detail, the former Emperor stated that killing Rey would’ve been Kylo Ren’s final test to “prove his worth;” by doing so, Kylo Ren would’ve finally exorcised the Jedi from the galaxy. Palpatine felt that despite Kylo Ren killing his father, killing Snoke, forcing Luke Skywalker’s death, assuming control of the First Order, he was still conflicted; he still felt the pull of the light side of the Force.

Palpatine wasn’t wrong, of course. Killing Rey would’ve been the final step in pushing Kylo Ren to the dark side of the Force, perhaps even setting him on the path to one day become a full-fledged Dark Lord of the Sith. But his Force Dyad bond with Rey, not to mention Leia’s sacrifice and Rey using Force heal on him, prevented his dark side turn from completing.

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Based on the reveal, it seems that Kylo Ren and Rey forming a Force Dyad bond was Palpatine’s ultimate goal, but when the Jedi threatened his existence and the Final Order from thriving, he would rather have had an apprentice – a descendant of the Skywalker bloodline – instead of both Kylo Ren and Rey together against him. However, there was only so much that Palpatine could predict, as all of his plans collapsed in the final act of The Rise of Skywalker.

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Mansoor Mithaiwala
(1888 Articles Published)

Mansoor Mithaiwala is Screen Rant’s TV Lead Editor. He originally joined the site as a freelance writer on the Lists team before moving over to News and Features, eventually becoming an editor in 2018. Over time he’s done quite a few different things, including helping launch gaming on the site, often handling news, features, and guides simultaneously. Now he sticks primarily to movies and TV, and spends way too much time looking at analytics. It sure seems like he’s put his Political Science degree to good use, huh?

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