15 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Emperor Palpatine

When Palpatine wrestled control of the galaxy away from the Republic and wiped out the Jedi Order, he converted the Jedi Temple into the Imperial Palace. Nothing says "I've effectively conquered you" than turning a massive religious monument of your enemies into the structure that houses your sizable throne. Donning the former temple with the Imperial Crest proved to be the icing on top for Sidious. The real twist lies in the fact that the Jedi built their Grand Temple over the ruins of a Sith shrine around 5000 BBY.

Underneath all that makeup, Ian McDiarmid was a relatively young man during his first portrayal as the big bad of the Star Wars franchise. It's hard to tell with all the vamping and cackling, but that was a guy in the prime of his life! It turns out giving a dude some yellow contacts and rotting teeth making him seem much, much older than he is. Casting McDiarmid as the Emperor in the early '80s would come in handy when bringing the character back for the prequel trilogy in the late '90s/early-00s and he convincingly played a younger version of Palpatine just about to take over the galaxy.

Even though Grand Moff Tarkin perished on the Death Star at the end of A New Hope, he has been a steady fan favorite since way back in 1977. Perhaps it is the stoic performance of the great Peter Cushing that gives Tarkin such staying power. Maybe it is his fantastic first name - Wilhuff - that makes him live on in the minds of Star Wars obsessives (it is just an incredible name, after all).

Palpatine had an interest in the military career of Tarkin from the very beginning– he first met the young Tarkin while he was training at the Sullust Sector Spacefarers Academy. The future Emperor would push Tarkin into politics and closely supported him for years. Tarkin may not have been involved with the Sith, but Sidious found a kindred spirit in him. At one point during the Clone Wars, Palpatine even sent Dooku to try and bait Tarkin into supporting the Separatist movement as a loyalty test, which the man passed with flying colors. This would set him up to be a major player in the eventual Galactic Empire. Sidious and Tarkin would remain close up until the very moment of Tarkin's death years later. 

Can we just say up front, does no one care that the creepy, hooded guy is hanging out with a young boy? Charles Soule's 2016 series Obi-Wan & Anakin shows that Palpatine's journey to turn Anakin Skywalker to the dark side started years before what we saw onscreen in Attack of the Clones, The Clone Wars, and Revenge of the Sith.

During this jaunt, Palpatine begins to sow doubt in Anakin's mind about Obi-Wan, saying his teacher "still has much to learn" himself. Sidious ends up taking the young Anakin to Club Kasakar, highlighting the corrupt nature of senators who are there. When Anakin asks Palpatine why the Senate hasn't eradicated slavery throughout the galaxy, Sidious responds by showing him the greedy senators having a great time in the nightclub, making shady dealings, and profiting from the people they're meant to serve. And it probably worked too.

Palpatine didn't think like your normal person. To be fair, you can't become Emperor of the known universe by thinking like a normal person. Life just doesn't work that way. Still, the Sith Lord was more than just an outside-the-box thinker... the guy had the severed hand of Luke Skywaker from The Empire Strikes Back just sitting in a jar on Exegol! That is not normal behavior! That being said, imagine the potential of an army of twisted Luke Skywalker clones. A clone army has been done before, quite famously with the Clone Wars kind of being a big deal. 

If that failed, they could've used midi-chlorians for Luke's hand for other experiments, not unlike Doctor Pershing's work with Grogu's blood on The Mandalorian. Regardless, spending an insane amount of resources on cloning research on Exegol ended up working out in the end for Palpatine, as he was able to return from the grave for The Rise of Skywalker, but that doesn't make it any less insane. 

During Maul's early childhood, Sidious became allied with Maul's mother, Mother Talzin, over their shared ventures of studying the dark side. Whenever Sidious came to visit, Maul would hide as his fantastic instincts told him to be afraid of the man.

Eventually, Sidious would take Maul from his home planet, Dathomir, at a young age and train the boy to be his apprentice in the dark side of the Force. This training began with devastating abuse in the form of regular beatings and starvation to break the boy's spirit. Maul would find his way back to Dathomirend up being a crime lord post-The Phantom Menace, shirking his destiny as the underling of Darth Sidious.