Star Wars has a lot of infamously terrible lines in it, but The Rise of Skywalker hits rock bottom. Yes, worse than “I hate sand”, “yousa thinking yousa people gonna die?”, and “now THIS is podracing”. For sheer storytelling contempt, Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron informing the gathered Resistance that “Somehow, Palpatine returned” is so awful it pretty much derailed the whole sequel trilogy project.
It marks the moment at which Disney and Lucasfilm decided to abandon every interesting story arc left over from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi for a failed nostalgia trip to the moldy leftovers of the original trilogy. Now, fans on r/StarWars are swapping opinions of what they thought when they first heard Poe’s infamous line.
Some say that, in the moment, it didn’t seem so bad, as they assumed the “somehow” would be explained later in the movie. That doesn’t really happen, so it’s only lazy storytelling in retrospect. Others say that the moment was softened by Palpatine’s return being revealed in the teasers, on Fortnite, and in the opening crawl, so at least it wasn’t a surprise.
But by far the most common response is that it’s “stupid”, “dumb”, “a facepalm moment”, “cringe”, and “I hated it”. We have to agree. Whatever your opinion of The Last Jedi, Disney and Lucasfilm could easily have built a great finale on its foundations. Rey is coming into her own as a Jedi and Kylo Ren is the Supreme Commander of the First Order, which should have led to a conflict between them.
Jettisoning that in favor of bringing back the very obviously dead Palpatine without ever explaining how he survived being thrown into a reactor shaft (inside a Death Star on the verge of exploding) was just insulting.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is available to view on Disney Plus.
