{"id":58701,"date":"2025-04-28T23:30:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T23:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58701\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T23:30:09","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T23:30:09","slug":"ian-mcdiarmid-on-backlash-towards-palpatine-return","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/58701\/","title":{"rendered":"Ian McDiarmid on backlash towards Palpatine return"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ian McDiarmid is a cherished figure in the Star Wars universe, but even he wasn\u2019t immune to the criticism surrounding the return of Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Long presumed dead after being cast into a reactor shaft by Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine\u2019s sudden reappearance\u2014along with the explanation that he had been orchestrating events from the shadows\u2014sparked widespread debate among fans.<\/p>\n<p>While speaking with <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2025\/film\/features\/star-wars-ian-mcdiarmid-revenge-of-the-sith-emperor-1236376625\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Variety<\/a>, McDiarmid addressed the backlash. \u201cWell, there\u2019s always something, isn\u2019t there? I don\u2019t read that stuff and I\u2019m not online. So it\u2019ll only reach me if someone mentions it. I thought there might be a bit of a fuss about bringing him back,\u201d he said. \u201cBut as I said, mine and Palpatine\u2019s logic was entirely reasonable. This man who was horribly maimed thought maybe one day it might happen to him, and we\u2019ve got to have a plan B. I loved the whole idea that he should come back and be even more powerful than he was before. Though this time, he had to be utterly destroyed. So I think he\u2019s dead.\u201c<\/p>\n<p>        Related<br \/>\n        <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joblo.com\/new-star-wars-movies\/\" title=\"\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><br \/>\n            Daisy Ridley\u2019s Rey set to play role in several new Star Wars movies        <\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Rise of Skywalker also revealed that Rey (Daisy Ridley) was Palpatine\u2019s granddaughter, which McDiarmid was thrilled by, although he was never entirely sure how the Sith Lord had any children. \u201cThere was never any discussion of any of that. It was up to me to work it out in my head. There was talk in \u2018The Phantom Menace\u201d about something called midichlorians, which were involved somehow in Anakin\u2019s birth. George didn\u2019t want to go too deeply into that,\u201d McDiarmid said. \u201cBut we reckoned it was kind of virgin birth, though one ought not to say that because God knows you get all sorts of complications. Then people ask the slightly embarrassing question about, \u201cDoes this evil monster ever have sex?\u201d And we don\u2019t really know the answer to that question either \u2014 things in tubes, you think about probably, rather than the awful vision that you might have in your head of this monster ever having a sexual relationship with anybody.\u201c<\/p>\n<p>The re-release of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joblo.com\/revenge-of-the-sith-20\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith<\/a> (featuring McDiarmid at his most deliciously evil) is currently playing in theaters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ian McDiarmid is a cherished figure in the Star Wars universe, but even he wasn\u2019t immune to the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,30659,3943,27498,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-58701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ian-mcdiarmid","10":"tag-movies","11":"tag-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114418196338847783","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}