Ian McDiarmid on backlash towards return of Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker

Ian McDiarmid is a cherished figure in the Star Wars universe, but even he wasn’t immune to the criticism surrounding the return of Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Long presumed dead after being cast into a reactor shaft by Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine’s sudden reappearance—along with the explanation that he had been orchestrating events from the shadows—sparked widespread debate among fans.

While speaking with Variety, McDiarmid addressed the backlash. “Well, there’s always something, isn’t there? I don’t read that stuff and I’m not online. So it’ll only reach me if someone mentions it. I thought there might be a bit of a fuss about bringing him back,” he said. “But as I said, mine and Palpatine’s logic was entirely reasonable. This man who was horribly maimed thought maybe one day it might happen to him, and we’ve got to have a plan B. I loved the whole idea that he should come back and be even more powerful than he was before. Though this time, he had to be utterly destroyed. So I think he’s dead.“

The Rise of Skywalker also revealed that Rey (Daisy Ridley) was Palpatine’s granddaughter, which McDiarmid was thrilled by, although he was never entirely sure how the Sith Lord had any children. “There was never any discussion of any of that. It was up to me to work it out in my head. There was talk in ‘The Phantom Menace” about something called midichlorians, which were involved somehow in Anakin’s birth. George didn’t want to go too deeply into that,” McDiarmid said. “But we reckoned it was kind of virgin birth, though one ought not to say that because God knows you get all sorts of complications. Then people ask the slightly embarrassing question about, “Does this evil monster ever have sex?” And we don’t really know the answer to that question either — things in tubes, you think about probably, rather than the awful vision that you might have in your head of this monster ever having a sexual relationship with anybody.“

The re-release of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (featuring McDiarmid at his most deliciously evil) is currently playing in theaters.

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