Warning: Spoilers for Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red #1!The iconic Star Wars villain, Emperor Palpatine, kept star systems in line thanks to his constant need to impose and maintain his ultimate power across the galaxy. When he was defeated during the events of Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, it was seen as a decisive victory for the good guys, but in the comic space, it’s now been brought to fans’ attention that this loss was always in the cards for Palpatine from the start.

Redefining Palpatine’s defeat at the hands of the Rebels in Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White and Red #1, this uniquely presented prequel-era series sees Darth Maul sent on a mission to figure out what happened to a prison transport that “has gone dark.”

Boarding the ship only to find horror upon horror inflicted against the people remaining, Maul is met by The Final Occultation, a terrifying monster of the void who explains that chaos is the natural way of the galaxy, suggesting that Palpatine, his Empire, and the order he imposed with it was never meant to last.

Palpatine Trying To Impose Order On The Galaxy Ensured His Fall

Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red #1 (Benjamin Percy and Stefano Raffaele)

A theory revealed after a member of The Final Occultation — an order “aided by chaotic forces that flow from the Netherworld” who vow to destroy the Sith — takes Maul’s mind and tries to drag him into madness, Maul then manages to kill two high-ranking leaders of the cult, then follows the screams to the final priest. Self-describing itself as “an emissary of chaos,” Maul tussles with this dark entity and is told that “Sidious has the wrong ambitions” attempting to use the dark side to “control,” revealing that “Chaos. Not order” is the “true system of the universe.”

Saying that the light and dark sides of the Force are “binary” and “ways of order,” this creature also alludes to the fact that Palpatine was wrong to try and impose his Empire’s law and order in any form across the galaxy. Acting as a theoretical reason for why Palpatine couldn’t stay in power, the idea that the universe fundamentally rejects order and defaults to disorder is huge as this entity posits that the galaxy has and will always be destined for horrific chaos, something that ruined Palpatine’s galactic plans when he tried to resist that idea.

The Galaxy Is Meant To Be In Chaos And Palpatine’s Empire Contradicts That

While not discounting the efforts and sacrifices made by the Rebels in the original trilogy era, it does stand to reason that they were also helped due to the galaxy needing to return to chaos, an interesting wrinkle in Palpatine’s loss of power in both Return of the Jedi and Rise of Skywalker that could also explain why the Jedi Order eventually fell to ruin as well. Disorder is the basis of Star Wars’ faraway galaxy, so maybe it’s time its opposite takes a seat and lets chaos reign for a while, something that Emperor Palpatine simply couldn’t understand.

Star Wars: Darth Maul – Black, White & Red #1 is available from Marvel Comics.