Contains spoilers for Star Wars (2020) #42!Emperor Palpatine has already returned from death once in Star Wars, but a newly introduced part of Sith culture could have just created a loophole for him to come back again. With the knowledge of this method of life preservation a rare secret in the galaxy during the time of the Empire, it could be up once again to the same hero who helped defeat Palpatine the first time to stop the Emperor from making yet another comeback.
Palpatine is shown to be familiar with ways to cheat death, having studied under Darth Plagueis, who was obsessed with becoming immortal. Later, in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine returns from the dead with essentially no explanation, though this return is elaborated on in the film’s novelization Rise of Skywalker: Expanded Edition written by Rae Carson. The novel reveals that Palpatine actually returns in a clone body, which is possessed by the original Palpatine’s spirit.
Now, Star Wars (2020) #42 (written by Charles Soule, penciled by Steven Cummings, inked by Wayne Faucher, colored by Rachelle Rosenberg and lettered by VC’s Clayton Cowles) has shown another way that Sith can survive after death. This leaves the door open for one more shocking return for the Sith Lord.
Palpatine Could Return Through His Lightstaber’s Crystal
The issue explains that Sith can survive through their red Kyber crystals, the mineral that forms the heart of a red lightsaber. Set before Return of the Jedi, the current Star Wars comic series has recently followed Luke Skywalker after he’s sucked into a Sith-controlled world within such a crystal. Now, in Star Wars #42, new character Auntie Feez, one of the few surviving practitioners of the ancient Force-based religion the Fallanassi, explains, “When a Force user creates a red crystal, the terrible events in their past are encoded into the Kyber’s very substance. The experiences, the memories…remain inside the crystal.”
As proven by the Sith consciousness inside Luke’s red crystal, a Sith can survive through a red crystal in all the ways that matter. It’s therefore not hard to imagine a survival-obsessed Sith like Palpatine using this to cheat death yet again. As Feez and the Sith inside Luke’s crystal both express, the consciousness inside a Kyber crystal is all but indistinguishable from the real person, and the statuses of Palpatine’s various red lightsabers aren’t known. If Palpatine’s soul could jump into clones of himself, then why couldn’t a copy of it find a way to escape its crystal and do essentially the same thing?
Palpatine Has Returned To Life In The Comics Before
This wouldn’t be the first time that a version of Palpatine returned in comics either. In the pre-Disney acquisition Legends canon, Palpatine also uses clones to return in the Dark Empire trilogy (written by Tom Veitch, illustrated by Cam Kennedy and Jim Baikie). After coming back from death, he attempts to sway Luke to the dark side one final time before dying for real. Now, Luke is one of the few people left in the galaxy who knows what potential dangers lurk within a red Kyber crystal. But since Luke himself has died in current Star Wars continuity, if Emperor Palpatine did leave a copy of himself within a Kyber crystal, it’s unknown who would be able to stop him from returning to life once again.
