When Luke stands before the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine says one of the strangest lines in the saga: “I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of your hatred, and your journey towards the Dark Side will be complete.” On the face of it, that makes no sense. This is a man who’s spent decades manipulating everything to stay in control of the galaxy, why is he suddenly begging his enemy to cut him down?
Back in 1983, the usual answer was simple: he wanted Luke to fall, kill in anger, and then take Vader’s place at his side. But The Rise of Skywalker adds a new layer we didn’t have before. What was Palpatine really trying to get out of that moment—and how does Exegol change the way we look at his offer?
In 1983, the Idea Was Straightforward: Make Luke Fall
If we stay inside Return of the Jedi only, Palpatine’s plan is pretty clear.
He spends the entire throne room sequence pushing Luke toward one choice: pick up your lightsaber, give in to anger, and kill someone you hate.
First, he goads Luke into attacking him (“Strike me down with all of your hatred…”), then shifts to taunting him about his friends and the fleet until Luke finally snaps and goes after Vader instead. The goal either way is the same: get Luke to cross the line from Jedi restraint into Sith-style murder. Once Luke kills in hatred, Palpatine can frame it as a point of no return and claim him as a new apprentice.
That’s the original reading. Palpatine wants a replacement for Vader. If he dies in the process, it’s only because he miscalculated. At least, that’s how it looked before we ever heard the word “Exegol.”
Exegol Shows That “Strike Me Down” Is a Ritual, Not Just a Taunt
Jump to The Rise of Skywalker. Palpatine is hooked up to machines on Exegol, ruling through the Sith Eternal cult and a resurrected clone body. Official material is very blunt about how he got there: after his death at Endor, Sidious transferred his essence into a clone of his original body through dark side power. That new vessel was unstable, so the Sith Eternal kept growing bodies and searching for a “stronger host.”
Behind that is a specific dark side ability. Wookieepedia calls it transference or transfer essence, a power that lets a darksider move their spirit into another body. It’s rooted in old Sith attempts at immortality, and in canon it’s tied to Plagueis’ and Sidious’ obsession with cheating death.
On Exegol, Palpatine finally says the quiet part out loud. When Rey confronts him in the Sith Citadel, he doesn’t just tell her to kill him in anger for the fun of it. He spells out what happens next:
“You want to kill me. That is what I want. Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you. As all the Sith live in me… you will be Empress. We will be one.”
The Databank backs that up very directly. In its entry on Emperor Palpatine, it explains that his real target on Exegol is Rey, and that “if Rey struck him down, Palpatine’s spirit would pass into her, allowing the Sith to be reborn.”
So by the time of The Rise of Skywalker, “strike me down” isn’t just psychological manipulation. It’s the trigger phrase for a Sith ritual. If you kill him in anger, his spirit jumps into you and the Sith line continues inside a new body.
Reading the Throne Room Again After Exegol
Once you know what’s really on the table with Rey, it’s hard not to look back at Luke’s scene and see the same move.
In both cases, Palpatine has a Skywalker in front of him—first Luke, then Rey—someone with huge Force potential and a blood connection to either Anakin or Sidious himself. In both scenes, he’s in a throne, surrounded by his power, nudging them toward one choice: kill him in hatred.
The original trilogy never uses the words “essence transfer” or “transference.” That language comes later. But the pattern lines up. On Exegol, we’re told outright that if Rey kills him, his spirit will pass into her and the Sith will live on. We also know from the same era of lore that he already used this trick once when he died above Endor, jumping into a clone body prepared by the Sith Eternal.
In Secrets of the Sith, Palpatine explains the trick in his own words: “Studying his methods, I learned how to transfer my own consciousness, through the Force, from one mortal vessel to another. Even if my flesh was doomed to fail, my spirit would be eternal!”
Put that together, and Luke’s throne room scene starts to look less like a one-off taunt and more like an earlier run at the same basic plan. Palpatine is doing what he always does: setting up a situation where any “wrong” move benefits him.
If Luke refuses to strike him down, Palpatine keeps torturing his friends and trying to break him. If Luke attacks and kills in hatred, Palpatine wins twice: Luke falls to the dark side, and Sidious has a chance to ride that death into a new, younger Skywalker body.