Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s once again the merry month of may, so I felt it would be somewhat appropriate to talk a bit about Star Wars again.
Now, admittedly, we’re a bit late for May the Fourth, but I assure you, there is some reason to my madness. I have, of course, written about Star Wars several times before. In fact, one of my earliest ever articles was focusing on Star Wars. This was, of course, back in the halcyon days where the Prequel trilogy was the thing that was hated, and that article was me speaking up against two arguments that I, personally, didn’t feel really added up.
Then there’s the multitude of fan theories, most of which seemed eerily similar, in that most of them just boiled down to ”[Character] is secretly a Sith Lord”. But with all that in mind, and given that today is the Revenge of the Sixth, I’ve decided to share a few observations and thoughts, about an actual Lord of the Sith.
Specifically, this article will be something of a character study of Sheev Palpatine AKA Darth Sidious, similar to the ones I’ve done with Maleficent, Lady Tremaine and Cruella de Vil.
I will admit, ahead of time, that my knowledge of the character is based on the Emperor like we see him in the movies, so I cannot speak in detail about how he may appear in other media. That being said, the things I wish to speak about are really things that are fundamental to his character.
But of course, I should clarify ahead of time that these are just personal opinions and subjective interpretations, before I inadvertently anger anyone.
With that out of the way, let’s begin!
Now, the thing I really want to talk about when it comes to Palpatine is that, in a way, he’s actually very similar to the aforementioned Lady Tremaine. And it’s not just their shared taste in fancy gowns and needless use of a walking stick, or that both have a glare that can kill butterflies…
No, it’s more the way they have a very one-track mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike watching Palpatine. I don’t doubt that he’s strong and menacing and sinister and all that, and I truly think Ian McDiarmid did an amazing job portraying the character. But I also feel that Palpatine really shows how much a good actor can elevate what is, unfortunately, an otherwise rather flat character.
I remind you, according to Ian McDiarmid himself, his brief of Palpatine when he first played the character in Return of the Jedi was ”He is extremely old and he runs the universe, and Darth Vader works for him”. That’s it.
Because when the chips are down, I think Palpatine just isn’t very interesting as a character. Or actually even as a villain.
The thing with Palpatine is that he covets power. Everything he does is in service of the pursuit and consolidation of power. Everyone around him is either an asset to use or an obstacle to destroy, and he seeks power so that he can gain power so that he can acquire more power.
I honestly believe that the fact that Palpatine is the Dark Lord of the Sith is secondary to him. He’s not like Darth Vader or Count Dooku or Maul, all of whom seem to truly believe in the teachings of the Sith, and the supposed ”truth” they offer. But to Palpatine, being a Sith is only another avenue for him to gain power, and if he thought that ABANDONING those teachings would somehow gain him more power, then he would do so without a moments thought.
But therein lies one of the big flaws in Palpatine’s character. Palpatine desires power, he seeks it, consolidates it, hoards it… The problem is that the accumulation of power is a means, not an end.
Palpatine, at no point, seem to have an actual GOAL, no real purpose for which he wants to use that power. He doesn’t seek power and office because he believes he’s uniquely qualified to rule, or that there is something he wishes to accomplish. Compare this to Frollo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who wishes to cleanse Paris (and presumably France in general if given the chance) of what he believes to be those that are sinful, evil and corrupted. He has a mission, a goal, towards which he focuses the power he wields. He serves what he, in his twisted world-view, believes to be a righteous cause.
Or you have Maleficent, the self-termed ”Mistress of All Evil”, and what I initially viewed as also lacking a goal… except that is because she seems to be content with the power she wields. She gets pissed when disrespected, but beyond that, doesn’t seem to care.
Palpatine, by contrast, is never satisfied, always yearning for more power. Once he claims political power, having established his empire, he seems to go out of his way to use that power solely to make others unhappy, and to gather more personal power. There’s no real POINT to it!
Another of his fatal flaws, which I’m not sure if it’s deliberate or not, is actually something that at a glance might seem like a positive.
Palpatine, as far as we can see, is a planner. He’s a scheming plotter, able to arrange complicated deceptions and manipulations in the long term. But the flip side of that is that Palpatine is actually really, REALLY bad at short term planning.
Think about it. Every single time, across the movies, when Palpatine has to think on his feet and improvise, it goes badly for him! He has the problem all long-term planners have, that when his carefully laid plan doesn’t go the way he wants it, he’s kinda stumped.
Take the fight against Mace Windu in Revenge of the Sith. Windu and three other Jedi enter his office and prepare to arrest him. It ends with Palpatine in a one-on-one duel with Windu, and it’s a fight Palpatine loses! The only reason he didn’t die there was because Anakin intervened!
In Return of the Jedi, Palpatine planned on Luke killing Vader and replacing him. Then Luke rejected him, and he tried to kill Luke in retaliation, leading to Vader turning on him and killing him.
And in Rise of Skywalker, he was planning on Rey killing him, which would lead to him taking over her body, prolonging his life. And when that didn’t work, he once again tried to kill her (remember, ”asset to use” vs ”obstacle to destroy”), which led to his own destruction.
And part of the reason he is so bad at long term planning is actually tied to his own obsession with power. The Sith, by their nature, are duplicitous. Their whole shtick is betrayal, where the apprentice will murder the master, and then find a new apprentice. Palpatine, knowing this, is actually unusually guarded against betrayal in that sense. Anyone who seeks to betray him out of lust for power is thinking the exact same way he does.
Remember when he was at the mercy of Mace Windu, and trying to manipulate Anakin? His exact words were
I have the power to save the one you love!
Earlier in the movie, he enraptures Anakin, talking about the powers of the dark side, the power to create life, to keep those you love from dying.
Palpatine doesn’t love. He doesn’t feel empathy or compassion or remorse. Love, compassion, support and attachment are only useful tools, in that they are ways to manipulate others. So even when he offers Anakin help to protect those he loves, he does so through the offer of power. And that is why he died in Return of the Jedi. Because in that moment, he had the power. Luke was at his mercy, Vader was at his side, and he was the indisputable master of the situation.
It never occurred to him, never even ENTERED HIS MIND, that Vader would betray him. Because Palpatine doesn’t understand love. He has no interest in it, beyond its use for manipulation. So to him, it would be utterly unthinkable that Vader would choose to betray him at this point, and reject the power he offers, in favour of helping Luke, who clearly had to use to him! By the same token, Palpatine also doesn’t understand or even care about the light side of the force, simply because it doesn’t seek to acquire power. As Yoda explains it to Luke, when asked if the Dark Side is stronger.
No, no, no. Quicker. Easier. More seductive.
And this obsession of power is, ultimately, what leads to his destruction in Rise of Skywalker. Because to Palpatine, power is the end-all-be-all. When power doesn’t work, his only answer is ”use more power”.
So when he has tapped into an ASTOUNDING source of power, enough to fill the sky above them with lightning bolts, and turns that power on Rey… she does the same thing Windu did when he fought Palpatine. She turned the lighting back on him.
And Palpatine, locked in the mindset of ”UNLIMITED POWER” does the only thing he can think of: He uses more power, which goes right back at him without stopping or slowing down, and he rips himself apart because he is incapable of understanding that the light side could possibly be a match for him, and instead thinks that if he just uses more power, he will win.
Palpatine loses, and keeps losing, because he has a single-track mind, is deeply unimaginative and, as Luke points out, he is incredibly overconfident in his own power. And therein lies the problem with him as a character.
Sure, it may be thematically appropriate, but much like the flaws I mentioned about Scar in The Lion King, it doesn’t really change the fact that Palpatine, as a character, isn’t actually very interesting or deep.
Palpatine doesn’t grow. He doesn’t learn, he doesn’t develop. He doesn’t have an arc where he changes over the course of the story. He has no goal he wishes to accomplish, nobody he cares about…
And that is why, again, he is very similar to Lady Tremaine. My quibble with her is that she is defined by her relationship with Cinderella. Palpatine is the same way. He is the dark figure in the big chair, with the ominous music. He has no purpose, except being the bad guy! In Return of the Jedi, he doesn’t have much of a defined personality, because he doesn’t really need one, since we already have Vader, the villain with the direct tie to the hero, the character we know is dangerous, the character with the arc and the pathos.
Palpatine is, in some ways, less of a character, and more just a function. A walking, talking, lightning-throwing plot point. His function in the story is to tempt Luke with the power of the Dark Side, to be something for Luke and Vader to overcome. And this fact, this limitation, tinges every incarnation of him, where all they can do, the only place they can go with him, is ”seeking power for the sake of power”.
Maybe they could have given him more of a backstory. Maybe they could have shown us how he grew over time, how the dark side corrupted him, and given him some kind of goal he sought to pursue in the prequels. But seemingly, they also saw him as little more than a function in the story where they made him a central player.
Again, I do enjoy watching him. But I do find him, as a character, a tad boring. He is a villain, through and through, and he’s certainly effective as a villain, no doubt about that. But that’s all he was in 1980, and that’s all he is today.
It’s just a shame there isn’t really more to him. The Emperor has no clothes… and no one seems to want to admit it.
Devil in the Details 