Beloved Star Wars Actor Calls Out Most Infamous Sequel Trilogy Line

By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 20 seconds ago

The Star Wars sequels are very different from the prequels in writing, tone, characterization, and more. But these newer movies have one thing in common with older films like The Phantom Menace: they are best enjoyed ironically. For example, The Rise of Skywalker may have failed to deliver organic storytelling or satisfying character arcs, but it did give us hilariously bad lines such as Poe Dameron’s “Somehow, Palpatine returned.” It took fans no time at all to make endless memes of this silly dialogue to make fun of how poorly thought-out the sequels are.

Recently, Josh Horowitz interviewed Oscar Isaac, and the Poe Dameron actor actually spoke about the infamous line of dialogue. In the interview, Isaac revealed that this line was added at the last minute as part of reshoots for this final film in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. He also gently called the line of dialogue out, revealing that he was surprised that it became his most famous line, and that when he rewatches the scene, he mostly focuses on how good his wig looks.

He’s Just A Poe Boy

In The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren surprised us all by killing Lord Snoke, the mysterious First Order leader who had been set up to be the franchise’s newest Big Bad. Instead of giving us a new villain for the sequel, J.J. Abrams brought Emperor Palpatine back for The Rise of Skywalker. This was understandably confusing for fans because we all saw him die in Return of the Jedi. His body seemingly blew up after Darth Vader threw him into a Death Star shaft. Shortly thereafter, the entire space station exploded. How the heck could anyone, even someone with the power of Emperor Palpatine, survive all that?

Well, The Rise of Skywalker didn’t bother to explain something so fundamental to Star Wars lore. Instead, the beginning and end of the explanation were given to Oscar Isaac, whose Poe Dameron character reveals to his fellow Resistance members that “somehow, Palpatine returned.” The dialogue is frustrating in its vagueness, and it arguably highlights the core problem of the Sequel Trilogy. Namely, the seeming belief among writers, producers, and directors that nothing has to make sense and that fans will show up to blindly support anything with the Star Wars name on it.

How Palpatine Got His Groove Back

In Oscar Isaac’s interview with Josh Horowitz, he was pretty blunt about the circumstances that led to this infamous line of dialogue. “Yeah, those were reshoorts … those are like surgical strikes where you come in and try to make sense of it all while they’re scrambling to get everything done. That line was a new addition, right at the end.” While Isaac didn’t directly criticize how bad the script for The Rise of Skywalker was, his words emphasize the haphazard nature of the entire film. Apparently, JJ Abrams and his team forgot to explain how Palpatine came back to life, and having Isaac’s hotshot pilot blurt out “somehow, Palpatine returned” was the best thing they could come up with.

Plus, there’s a bit of ambiguity (intentionally, I imagine) in his phrasing of reshoots as “surgical strikes.” He could simply be talking about the actors who come back for reshoots trying to understand what has changed since they were last on set. Of course, he could also be talking about how Abrams and his team used last-minute reshoots to make their botched story line somehow make sense. Either way, he’s calling out The Rise of Skywalker for being a movie so crazy that even those who spent months making it had no idea what it was really about.

Now, Disney is hoping that the upcoming film The Mandalorian & Grogu will help reignite fans’ passion for this dying franchise. Unfortunately, after a decade of executive mismanagement, most of the fandom no longer trusts the creators involved to deliver a quality product. If the film somehow blows us all away, though, fans may finally put a positive spin on Oscar Isaac’s most infamous line with their own ironic twist: “somehow, Star Wars returned.”