Now this might very well be a big ol’ pile of Bantha Poodoo, but at the risk there’s something in this we can’t just ignore it. Seems Jedi News are claiming an unnamed source of theirs has informed them of the return of a very significant actor to the Galaxy far, far away: Ian McDiarmid, aka Emperor Palpatine himself. As we all know, Palpatine was last seen facing the business end of a Death Star reactor shaft, but in the Expanded Universe he’d cannily commissioned clones to take over his evil doing should he ever be bested. Smart move. Now, it’s previously gone on record that Lucasfilm weren’t planning to adapt any of the Expanded Universe stuff, but as we all know that’s never stopped them mining from it in the past – the CLONE WARS micro-series introduced General Grievous, Boba Fett was first appeared in THE HOLIDAY SPECIAL, as did Chewie’s homeworld of Kashyyyk – so anything can happen really. Personally, this writer is all for it. As big bads go, you can’t really top Palpatine in the SWU. After all, he’s got (everybody) “UN-LIM-IT-ED POWERRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!” Chilling.

We’ll have more news… well, as soon as Lucasfilm want to say something. Anything! They’ve certainly been quiet of late: missing SDCC, Celebration Europe AND last week’s D23 Disney expo. Read into that what you will…

STAR WARS EPISODE VII opens summer 2015. Hopefully.

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