17 Unanswered Questions About The 'Star Wars' Universe That ‘Rise Of Skywalker’ Didn’t Clear Up

A big part of Rise of Skywalker revolves around the Resistance rushing to find a Sith Wayfinder that would allow our heroes to locate the Sith planet where the reanimated corpse of Palpatine is residing. Fortunately for them, they find a dagger with Sith written on it that apparently shows where the Wayfinder is.

Again, the dagger doesn't say where the planet is - it merely says where to find the Wayfinder. Specifically, it says it's in the ruins of the emperor's throne room on Death Star II. In fact, when Rey holds the dagger up to the ruins of the Death Star, the jagged blade lines up perfectly and shows where she needs to go.

Who made that dagger? It's written in a language that is apparently unlawful to speak (and is an essentially obsolete language), and it has to have been made after Return of the Jedi because how else would it match the Death Star detritus? Did Palpatine make it? If so, why?

Maz Kanata is introduced in Force Awakens. It's immediately clear she must have been a big player in the Rebellion at some point because she is holding onto Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. How she got it is said to be a "story for another time," but that time apparently will never come.

How did this seemingly random figure get the lightsaber of the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy? Also, why? Luke gave up being a Jedi, so it makes sense he might not want his saber, but did he just hand it to Kanata before he left, or did he sell it at an intergalactic pawn shop and Kanata happened to notice it was on sale?

Rise of Skywalker gets a lot of mileage out of a new Force power that allows Force-wielders to heal life-threatening wounds. It even appears possible to borderline resurrect those who have perished. 

But that still doesn't really explain how Palpatine is still alive four decades later. In Return of the Jedi, Palpatine is thrown down an impossibly far shaft and explodes. As if that isn't enough, the entire Death Star also explodes, presumably obliterating every last drop of Palpatine blood.

Even if there's the power to rebuild Palpatine's tiny parts into the semi-functioning zombie we see in Rise of Skywalker, who is the one doing that? Rey doesn't resurrect herself - Kylo has to do it, and even then the effort is so great he himself perishes. Remember, Rey says she's able to heal by transferring some of her life force into that big sand snake. Kylo has apparently given Rey all of his life force.

So the question remains: Who gave Palpatine the life force necessary to come back to life? And how did they even manage to find his body parts to begin the process?

Thanks to Rise of Skywalker, it is now officially canon that Palpatine is a father. Given the timeline, it's safe to assume Palpatine started a family right around the fall of the Republic. What's weird, though, is how he might have been intimate with somebody without knowing if they became pregnant or somehow lost that child after the fact. You'd think the emperor and Lord of the Sith would be a bit more careful about who he sleeps with and also probably use protection. Or, if he knew about his child, he'd be better about keeping tabs on who could possibly become one of the most powerful Jedi of all time given his lineage.

Even more interestingly, what circumstances led to that son living on Jakku, getting married, having a child of his own, and then abandoning that child to save her from Palpatine?

In Rise of Skywalker, it's revealed that Palpatine is not only alive but in possession of seemingly a thousand Star Destroyers. Not only that, each Star Destroyer appears to have a planet-destroying device similar to the Death Star and Starkiller Base.

If that's the case, why did the First Order waste so much time building and activating Starkiller Base just a couple years earlier when their leader (secretly) owned a whole fleet of those? Palpatine surely could have "gifted" them a Star Destroyer without revealing his entire fleet and planet. What exactly was he waiting for?

As Finn and the crew sink into the sinking fields on Pasaana, Finn tells Rey he wants to tell her something, presumably before they meet their end. They don't, so Finn doesn't actually speak his mind.

He never does. Was he going to confess his love before getting one-upped by Kylo Ren? Did he want to share his Force sensitivity? Was it something else?