Palpatine nearly returned in George Lucas's unmade TV series

It turns out Emperor Palpatine's dramatic comeback in 'The Rise of Skywalker' wasn't the first time there were plans to drag him back from the brink—for better or worse. As it happens, George Lucas himself floated the idea of bringing the old Sith back years before Disney got their hands on Star Wars. This one's straight from Ian McDiarmid, who, let's be honest, is basically Palpatine at this point.

Lucas Wanted Palpatine on TV—Seriously

Speaking at Spacecon 2026, McDiarmid shared a little nugget that even most diehard fans wouldn’t have sniffed out. According to him, Lucas once sat him down over lunch and pitched a live-action Palpatine TV series. Not exactly your everyday Tuesday conversation.

Lucas apparently wanted to explore the Emperor's rise to power—the dodgy political route, backroom deals, assassination attempts (all unsuccessful, because obviously), and a general vibe that McDiarmid described as 'like Hitler’s, some of that'. He also offhandedly suggested McDiarmid could direct an episode, which nearly bowled the actor over.

'[George Lucas] was talking about, I think I can tell you now, a television series. At the time we didn't think about Star Wars in terms of television series. Very speculative. We had lunch one day, and he said I've got this idea, and I hope you might want to be involved. We could sort of follow the Emperor's progress, like Hitler's, some of that. There might be an assassination attempt, and of course it wouldn't succeed. It sounded really exciting. And he also said that maybe you could direct one, and then I fainted. But sadly, that didn't come to pass.'

At that point, Lucas still ran Lucasfilm. This was before he sold it off to Disney in 2012, an event that promptly put any and all weirdly intriguing projects straight on ice.

So Was This That Rumoured 'Underworld' Thing?

Now, there's a reasonable chance this idea was related to 'Star Wars: Underworld'—the notorious live-action series Lucas spent years developing, meant to slot in between 'Revenge of the Sith' and 'A New Hope'. Reportedly, they got through over sixty scripts before everything got unceremoniously scrapped. If you’ve ever heard someone describe it as ‘Deadwood in space’, this is the one. Basically, it was supposed to dive face-first into all the criminal muck and nastiness bubbling under the surface of the galaxy.

As for Palpatine, apart from a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it turn in 'Obi-Wan Kenobi', McDiarmid hasn't popped up in a TV Star Wars project since. That juicy Palpatine-centric drama never made it past the lunch phase.

McDiarmid on That Controversial Return

Of course, Palpatine did eventually slither back onto screens in 'The Rise of Skywalker', and the less said about the mechanics of that resurrection, the better. The film's explanation—something about him pulling the strings from the shadows all along—has kept fans arguing ever since.

McDiarmid himself isn't bothered about all the fuss. Last year, he weighed in:

'Well, there's always something, isn't there? I don't read that stuff and I'm not online. So it'll only reach me if someone mentions it. I thought there might be a bit of a fuss about bringing him back. But as I said, mine and Palpatine's logic was entirely reasonable. This man who was horribly maimed thought maybe one day it might happen to him, and we've 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's dead.'