Emperor Palpatine's return was considered for a live-action Star Wars Disney+ series. Played by Ian McDiarmid, Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, was the ominous force and main villain behind the whole Skywalker Saga. While the Sith Lord was thought to be dead after Darth Vader's sacrifice in Return of the Jedi, the galaxy's big bad somehow returned in 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. As it turned out, Palpatine had not survived his devastating fate aboard the second Death Star, as his return came through cloning.
Palpatine also reappeared in recent years in The Bad Batch, which offered further insight into Project Necromancer and the Empire's cloning experiments that would one day resurrect the Sith Lord. The legendary villain even came to Disney+ in live-action once before in Obi-Wan Kenobi, though a hologram, as McDiarmid returned to taunt Darth Vader when he failed to kill his former Jedi master.
Andor writer Dan Gilroy recently spoke to Script Apart about the Disney+ series' original five-season plan to lead up to the events of Rogue One that was ultimately condensed to two seasons. He noted that, had the show run for five seasons as originally planned, Emperor Palpatine could have returned in the Disney+ show.
Gilroy stated that he "can't imagine that over five years [they] wouldn't have shown the Emperor" and further explored the "halls of power:"
"I mean, I can't imagine that over five years we wouldn't have shown the Emperor at that point. I think we would have gotten closer to that world. I think we would have gone, like, we're really getting a good sense of opposition forces here, but let's go deeper into the power at the moment, the halls of power. I think we would have gone deeper into the halls of power and explored that. That would have been the natural way to go, I think, the progression of it."
Showrunner Tony Gilroy explained to Rolling Stone that the Emperor was "too big a piece for [him] to introduce," although he admitted he "thought about it:"
“He was too big a piece of meat for me to introduce. It was too heavy a lift. I thought about it at one point, but it was too heavy a lift.”
Despite never appearing on screen, the Emperor had a hidden role in Andor Season 2's final arc through a flashback to Luthen's first act of rebellion. This attack took place on Palpatine's homeworld, Naboo, which was a calculated decision for Luthen to "stick his thumb into the eye of the guy that he hates more than anyone," according to writer Tom Bissell.
Andor Could Have Given Star Wars Its Best Emperor Yet
In the context of Andor's political thriller saga, dragging the Jedi and Sith into things could have muddied the waters of one of Star Wars' greatest stories ever told, perhaps taking away from its grounded, human-focused storyline.
If Emperor Palpatine were to have appeared in Andor, the show could have swerved his Sith origins to explore a different side of the galactic villain. Instead of featuring the lightning-blasting, Jedi-hating villain in that sense, Andor could have explored the Emperor as more of a politician and galactic dictator.
While keeping things grounded may have been the right call for Andor, it could have offered a different perspective on Palpatine, diving into how the galactic dictator was viewed by everyday people, not just those with deadly glowsticks.
Currently, the Emperor has no confirmed upcoming appearances, but with Darth Maul getting a Disney+ show next year, it stands to reason that his former master could show up in some form in Maul: Shadow Lord.
