How do we know Palpatine is really dead?

Yeah but when someone disappears down a shaft and is replaced by flashing lights and howling winds, that's pretty conclusive isn't it?

 

In the dominant myth in our culture, the main character is born of a virgin, dies and is brought back alive. It's not about material-world physics. Star Wars breaks many laws of physics, because it doesn't take place in outer space. It takes place in your head.

"Myths, so to say, are public dreams; dreams are private myths."
-- Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

 

"This is the way of our Order...

An individual may die, but the Sith are eternal."

(TFW your OTHER cloning facilities are STILL fully operational)​

 

That bird at the top reminds me of The Crow.(pun intended).

 

we cant

 

In all seriousness bringing back Palpatine was the worst decision they ever made. They not only made all the Skywalkers' sacrifices' pointless, they ended the saga on a nihilistic note. What's the point of killing off the most evil man in the galaxy when he comes back thirty years later and achieves his goal of finishing off Anakin's bloodline once and for all? Making Rey his descendent is the icing on the rotten cake....if Ben Solo was doomed to 'fall' because he had 'too much Vader in him', then there is a strong likelihood so will Rey, as her bloodline dictates it. That is the message we get from the ST.

As a lot of people have pointed out, there were a dozen ways of ending the Skywalker Saga but they chose that one. I'm sorry, but I will never understand them, not in a million years.

 

Ben Solo wasn't killed by Palpatine. He gave his life to save the one who gave her life destroying Palpatine. That is the opposite of nihilistic.

 

Okay, that's how you see it, but the fact is, Ben Solo died saving the woman he loved....
...who felt nothing for him in return. That is nihilistic, that someone who died saving someone else is completely forgotten, even by his own family. Compare it to Vader....he had a funeral pyre, a Force ghost appearance, and his son mourned him. Ben had none of those things. In the TROS novel, Rey's thoughts about him simply boiled down to 'she would have liked to get to know Ben Solo, but would never mourn Kylo Ren.' Luke lost his hand, his mentor and his aunt and uncle because of Vader, but he still wept for him and honoured him. Rey did not give a toss. I know it was Abrams and Terrio who wanted to get rid of the 'reylo' hints Rian Johnson set up in TLJ, but the way they did it, it made Rey seem a cold, uncaring person. And frankly, having every single member of the legacy family die will always be depressing and nihilistic to me. I'm sorry.

 

My sentiments exactly.
In any other 'medium', the idea of the child of a monster being adopted and choosing to reject their heritage of evil would be a positive thing....Terry Goodkind's Legend of the Seeker novels did this, for example. But THIS particular story, the Skywalker saga..is, or was, all about family. Anakin gave his life for his son. Padme died believing one day her husband would return to the Light. Luke refused to kill his own father, even when the shining forces of good, as represented by Obi Wan and Yoda, wanted him to.
Han sacrificed his life to save his son from the dark side, an act which ultimately worked. But to what purpose? He died saving someone who promptly forgot about him. Rey cried more for Han, who'd she'd known ten minutes, than for someone who supposedly was the 'other half of her soul', a dyad, and who perished because he gave her his life force. We didn't even get to see his Force ghost, as we did with Anakin. You can love or hate Ben Solo, but at the end of the day he was the last of the line. The last descendant of Anakin, the Chosen One. And he died saving someone who couldn't care less.

To me, the sight of Rey smirking on Tattooine while Ben's mother and uncle stood proudly gazing upon his replacement, wasn't so much hopeful as downright creepy. Heck, the last Blackadder dying a hero in Blackadder Goes Fourth was more moving than the Last Skywalker's death. It was so rushed even his fans didn't have time to feel sad. it was 'now he's gone let's focus on Rey and her friends'. Even more repugnant was the tie in novels, including the junior one, stressed how worthless and self hating Ben/Kylo was, and how he was actually 'grateful' to die so he could give Rey back to the galaxy.

Star Wars has become a disturbing freak show that actually glorifies suicide. Bad enough if they'd made Rey a Kenobi, or a Nobody. But making her a Palpatine has, no matter how you try to push it as hopeful, given the Star Wars saga to the Emperor. Thirty years after Anakin 'killed' him, his seed lives while Anakin's is extinct.

 

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. As long as you refuse to understand them, you never will.

 

I don't think I want to understand them, because the only reason I can come up with is they wanted to give Lucas a huge enormous finger. Or, at least, Skywalker/Solo fans. That sounds petty and spiteful, and I am trying very hard not to let my personal disappointment make me think that DLF ...are a bunch of ....censored.

 

This dovetails the prime issue that I still have with the ending of the Sequel Trilogy films.... "Ben was doomed to fail, because muh bloodlines.... but Rey will rise above hers." It just doesn't sit well with me, especially with what comes after his death. So maybe it isn't a dovetail, but I digress....

That's beauty of Star Wars, right there. +1

Regardless of how anyone sees Kylo-ben's death, that scene has one of the greatest YEETS I've ever scene.

I chuckled heartily when he went flying.

No one is certain that Palpatine is dead. Not you, not me, and certainly not the creator's of the "Eternal-Palpatine-The-Undying-Clone-Jumper" mess @Disney. The Mouse-house brought back the "OMG-HE's So-EXPLODED-AND-Dead" guy, thus blowing-open the door to the Sith eternal discussion.... and msg boards get to live with all the speculation / hyperbole.

ALSO: Its ironic, the guy who studied EVERY ASPECT OF THE FORCE & trained the OT's BIG BAD but somehow still wasn't good enough for Disney's ST. - Whut? - It will tickle me till I stop being a fan, that Plagueis the Perfect Sequel Villain was sitting there, created by G. Walton Lucas.... and we were given Clone-Palpatine. And his granddaughter. - Whut?

Serious question: why? Was it from being raised on Jakku? Was it caused by Kylo Ren's mind probe? Was it from being rejected by Luke? Was it due to her bloodline? Whatever it was, I agree that Rey was unmoved when he died.

Is the Skywalker Legacy the same now, as it was before the Sequels? If it is not, then there is no almost.

If there was ONE thing that I took from the OT; it was: family-matters. "You're wrong Leia. You have that power too.... The Force is strong IN MY FAMILY."
The second was: Palpatine is dead.

So dead; in fact, that I refused to read the comics & novels where his clone(s) came back!!!

Oh, the irony of my life as a Star Wars fan.

Rey Palpatine can never be a Skywalker. There is no reason for me to accept someone TAKING another person's name just because they like/ want it.... especially after the family members are all dead. I see that as a sign of utter disrespect.

The Last Skywalker is in fact, a Palpatine.

This is how the SAGA ended for me.

I will remain, happily befuddled.

 

Palpatine represents spiritual death, the archetype of ultimate evil that takes over your world through your head. He is dead in consciousness, and sitting on a big dead flower throne. Joseph Campbell, George Lucas's mentor, said something like all characters and all gods in myths are personifications of energies at work inside of you-- that they are not outside of you, but what's going on inside. He said that dreams are private myths, and myths are public dreams, a dream we share together. Palpatine is an image of the archetype calling you in our unconscious, to take on this pattern, and be the next tyrannical dictator, or just a nasty person.

Ben gives his life energy to Rey, as she gave some of hers to heal him. I don't know that it's supposed to be a romantic love, but just hint at a tumultuous relationship inside of us, and reconciliation there that can be understood as poetry or a dream. I really think they may be joined, the dyad brought together as one. After he disappears, she breaks the polarity of opposites (her staff) into one lightsaber. Spiritual and material brought together as one, good and evil brought together as one in balance at the end. The anima and animus, something like that. Is it possible that in giving his whole life force to save her, that they have joined? There are esoteric hints in the sequel trilogy, or alchemical symbols, that it might be. In that situation, she would have the Skywalker family blood inside of her too. A Force wedding. Good and evil in one, reconciled, which is what is going on inside of us too.

 

Being certain is irrelevant. And it's overrated. The Jedi were certain the Sith were EXTINCT and that it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to return without them sensing.

Sorry your Plagueis wish wasn't fulfilled.

 

You know a while back, I read the leaks that emerged prior to TROS. One of them was that Ben Solo was 'yeeted'....and that was the last we saw of him.

Ridiculous? I wonder. It could explain Rey's unconcern of his fate, why he didn't get a FG - or even any dialogue in the last 20 minutes.

 

If you take a staff, or broomstick, and find the balance, you can achieve it by holding both ends, or by holding it in the middle. Palpatine went down to the very bottom of the (shaft) pole, and Anakin ascended all the way to the top of the pole as a force ghost. Rey (and Ben) broke the pole apart, and Rey holds it in the middle as the yellow lightsaber. In the mysteries, she would be standing on the porch of your inner temple, between your lower material body, and the higher aspects of your consciousness.

You are a luminous being.
This energy flows through you.
Visible light is seen on a spectrum of 7 colors.
In a metaphor about enlightenment, these are different energies inside of you, in your psychology. The top end of the stick, the purple color has a very high vibration, and the bottom of the spectrum, red, has a low vibration-- matter.

Anakin put the opposite polarities in their proper place in balance in "heaven and hell." Rey brought them together in the middle as one in balance.

 

Here is the staff, and the shaft that Palpatine was thrown down, and the same symbol of Mace Windu's purple lightsaber falling, and of Ben climbing out of the hole.

Light side
7 Purple/violet - spirit
6 Indigo blue
5 Blue - mind
4 Green - heart, caring, compassion, conscience, balance (See Luke Skywalker)

3 Yellow - willpower, action
2 Orange
1 Red - base consciousness, matter
Dark side

What I realized is that the Kenobi series is climbing back up this ladder, and confirmed an answer to a question that was in my mind, by putting two episodes on the first day, and combining the 6th and 7th steps into one show. If they had made the first and second steps one long show, it wouldn't fit the pattern of getting to the 4th chakra in the 4th episode. The first two and last two colors have been combined in the lightsabers of the Skywalker Saga, so we do not see an orange or indigo lightsaber. There are other reasons for thinking that, which I will not go into here. Get what I'm saying? We have red, yellow, green, blue, and purple lightsabers.

The last step for Kenobi is yoking to the Force by communing with the spirit of Qui Gon, hopefully.

It's why Kenobi is in such a low state at the beginning of the series. They're using him to show the climb back up from the very bottom, and getting on the path.

 

And possibly

Spoiler

the release of Jedi consciousness from the tomb,

which makes a heck of a lot of sense to me at the end of that climb. Episode 4 then, and all the baptism stuff, would be regeneration or rebirth of Jedi consciousness after the fall. That's actually pretty good. Leia as the moon goddess talked about in other posts, would be a young crescent moon, and the light is just starting to return.

Do you see how it all ties in with Palpatine's "death?" He's thrown down to the bottom, trying to get back up and fails. Palpatine is at rock bottom where the people have to keep him, and Anakin has the highest ground one can get.

 

Well she could travel back in time and be Shmi. There is that.