‘Star Wars’ Sheds Some Light On Why Palpatine Wanted Kylo Ren To Kill Rey
For a book that is clearly targeted towards a younger audience and that contains only 32 pages, Marc Sumerak’s The Secrets of the Sith is shaping up to become a kind of treasure trove for all things dark side. It gave us our first canon look at Darth Plagueis, well at least kind off, as Sidious’ master is depicted as a figure with glowing eyes staring out from under his hood. But it also sheds some light on Sidious’ contingency plan and why he ordered Kylo Ren to kill Rey at the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker.
Throughout the prequel and the original trilogies, Palpatine/Sidious was shown as the great puppet master who could foresee everything and always plan accordingly. Even when something went wrong for him, like Obi-Wan defeating Darth Maul, this didn’t slow him down, as he always seemed to have an alternative plan up his sleeve that would suit him as well. The Clone Wars was probably his biggest trick, where he played both the crumbling Republic and the Separatists against one another, declaring himself Emperor in the end.
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The destruction of the first Death Star was a setback, but the Imperial Fleet was ultimately able to track and hunt down the Rebels, nearly ending them at the Battle of Hoth. Later he let the Rebel Alliance purposely find the location of the second Death Star to lead them into a trap. And he would have succeeded there as well, had Darth Vader not finally decided to do what all Sith before him had done and what Sidious strangely couldn’t foresee: That he would betray and kill his master. But even for this scenario, the Emperor had planned ahead.
Palpatine’s contingency plan in case of his demise was well in place even before the Battle of Endor. The massive starship construction site on Exegol was in full operation, and the cloning process of Force-sensitive beings had started before the Empire fell apart. Still, when Sidious returned in The Rise of Skywalker, he somehow seemed to have lost his foresight: first, he ordered Kylo Ren to find and to kill Rey, later when Rey stood before him, he wanted her to kill him so that she could become a new vessel for his evil spirit. And when that didn’t pan out either, and Rey and Ben united against him, he decided to kill them both to use their Force powers to rejuvenate himself. Perhaps this was part of the plan, but it more likely was a bit of trial and error.
The Secrets of The Sith book now at least explains why Sidious ordered Ren to kill Rey: One of the more intriguing aspects of Kylo Ren was that throughout the whole sequel trilogy, he always felt the pull to the light side. He confessed as much to the burnt helmet of his grandfather, Darth Vader, in Episode VII and he hoped to end his inner conflict by first killing his father, then his master Snoke, and finally by letting out all his rage on his mentor, Luke Skywalker, but even then, he still wasn’t wholly committed to the dark side.
According to The Secrets of The Sith, Sidious hoped that killing Rey, with whom he had created a Force bond, would finally push Ren entirely over the edge, making his journey to the dark side complete, so that he could become a true Sith and succeed where Vader had failed. Such a plan had worked with Anakin (making him kill an unarmed Dooku and wounding Mace Windu), who was nearly as hot-blooded as Ren, so Sidious’s scenario was plausible. But ultimately, it failed, caused by Rey healing Ben, Leia sending her son a Force vision of his father and the Force Dyad with Rey, forcing Sidious to change his plan time and time again, or more likely to improvise.
It is probably not the best way to have a book – especially a children’s book – explain things that should have been presented in The Rise of Skywalker in the first place, and all the auxiliary material that has been and will be published won’t be able to completely clean up the mess that the story of Episode IX ultimately is. But this is not the fault of The Secrets of the Sith, a nicely written and well-illustrated book. Long-time Star Wars fans probably won’t get that many new things out of it, but for younglings, it is an excellent introduction to the dark side of the Force.
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