Palpatine’s death in Return of the Jedi was not originally treated like a mystery. The movie ends with Vader destroying his Sith master to save Luke, and the Emperor’s fall is presented as the end of his rule.
But The Rise of Skywalker changed that ending. Palpatine was no longer the villain Vader killed for good. He became a Sith who had already found a way around death.
That was how the ending worked emotionally. Vader had spent years serving Palpatine, but when Luke was being tortured in front of him, he finally turned against his master. He picked up the Emperor and threw him into the shaft, choosing his son over the Sith. Palpatine’s death was the act that brought Anakin Skywalker back before he died.
Ian McDiarmid later confirmed that he understood the scene the same way. During The Rise of Skywalker press in 2019, he told Digital Spy he was surprised Palpatine had returned because, when they made Return of the Jedi, George Lucas had treated the Emperor as dead. McDiarmid remembered being thrown down the Death Star shaft and asking Lucas if Palpatine came back. Lucas told him no. He was dead. So McDiarmid accepted that answer for decades, until J.J. Abrams brought him back for the final sequel movie.
The official Star Wars Databank still shows how that moment was supposed to land. It says that after Vader threw Sidious down the shaft, “At long last, the Emperor was dead,” before the sequel story adds that this was only what the galaxy believed.
That one change reshapes the ending. In Return of the Jedi, Vader destroys the Emperor. In The Rise of Skywalker, Vader destroys Palpatine’s body, while Palpatine’s spirit survives and returns on Exegol in a broken clone vessel.
George Lucas also did not build the sequel trilogy around that return. He had his own ideas for what would happen after Return of the Jedi, but Disney chose not to use them. Lucas said the stories he sold to Disney were not the ones they wanted to make, so they made their own.
That matters because Palpatine’s comeback was not the next step in Lucas’s ending. It was a later decision from the sequel trilogy, with J.J. Abrams bringing the Emperor back for the final movie after the story had already moved away from Lucas’s plan.
The problem is not only that Palpatine returned. The problem is what his return does to Return of the Jedi. The movie originally ends with the Emperor dead, the Sith master destroyed, and Vader’s final act completing Anakin’s redemption. The Rise of Skywalker keeps Vader saving Luke, but it removes the finality of killing Palpatine.
Vader still chose his son. He still turned back to the light. He still died as Anakin Skywalker, but Palpatine was supposed to be dead with him.