Trivia: Music composer John Williams has a cameo as a bartender on the planet Kijimi.
Trivia: Anthony Daniels once again appears as C-3PO, making him the only actor to be in all Star Wars films. Similarly, C-3PO and R2-D2 are the only characters to appear in all 9 Skywalker saga films. Sadly R2-D2's original actor, Kenny Baker, passed away in 2016.
Trivia: C-3PO's final line of dialogue, "Did you hear that?" is also the first line he speaks in the entire series, in Episode IV, "A New Hope."
Trivia: The opening crawl makes reference to Palpatine announcing his return from the dead through a broadcast. The film itself doesn't reveal what was said in the broadcast, but it was revealed in a Star Wars Fortnite event. The exact broadcast is as follows: "At last the work of generations is complete. The great error is corrected. The day of victory is at hand. The day of revenge. The day of the Sith."
Trivia: Boolio, the Ovissian who informs Finn and Poe of the First Order spy, is voiced by Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker).
Trivia: Director JJ Abrams has a vocal cameo as the droid D-0.
Trivia: Sally Guinness, granddaughter of Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi), has a cameo as one of the First Order officers during the scene where Kylo Ren addresses a small council.
Trivia: Rey's name translates to "King" in Spanish. Though there's no evidence to suggest this was ever meant to be a clue to her heritage, you can still find internet posts from as far back as 2015 in which fans speculate that Rey could be a descendant of the Emperor based entirely on this sole bit of information.
Answer: Palpatine has been manipulating Rey and Kylo Ren from the very start, bringing the pair together and instigating fights between them. He is trying to make Rey stronger so that when he takes over her body, she will be powerful. Palpatine can partially see the future and knows that Kylo will not be successful in actually killing Rey, but that their constant fights will cause the two to grow more powerful. Because he can see part of the future, he knows that eventually Rey will triumph over Kylo and "kill" him, and then come to confront him directly. He doesn't count on Ben Solo coming back to face him which winds up being his undoing.
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