Palpatine has been disseminating harsh remarks over the airwaves for five consecutive years within the Fortnite platform.
Five years ago, the deceased made their voices heard during the weekend. This wasn't in a "Star Wars" film, not even for the first time there or in ancillary tie-in materials like a comic book or novel. Instead, the highly anticipated return of the Skywalker Saga's primary antagonist, Darth Sidious, aka Emperor Palpatine, came as part of a "Fortnite" special event. "Star Wars" canonicity has never been stretched to such strange limits since.
There are numerous peculiar occurrences in "Star Wars" continuity, either the current version or the former Expanded Universe. These oddities typically remain confined within the text itself. Stepping outside of this ever-evolving continuity, there's a plethora of weirdness, just due to the influence of "Star Wars" on our culture. Separately, Darth Sidious announcing his grand resurrection to the galaxy as the ultimate revenge of the Sith, and the fact that the "final" "Star Wars" film would market itself through one of the "biggest video games on the planet," may not appear too absurd in light of what "Star Wars" has transformed into over the past nearly 50 years.
However, the veil was at its thinnest on December 14, 2019, and at the intersection of these two concepts was the "Fortnite" special event for "The Rise of Skywalker." If you could manage to get it running, you could watch (or wasted your time attempting to beat up) a digital replication of J.J. Abrams, Ben Schwartz of "Sonic the Hedgehog," and Geoff Keighley of the Game Awards introduce a clip from the movie. You could also witness what remains, astonishingly, one of only two legitimate sources for Palpatine's return to the galactic stage after five years.
The message itself is neither good nor bad. It's as typical of Darth Sidious to announce his return from the dead with a grand fleet of Star Destroyers and by essentially sending the "I lived, bitch" meme across the galaxy. The man is nothing if not theatrical and dramatic! Nevertheless, the absurdity remains that, five years later—in a series that loves to continually contextualize itself—this event, and its subsequent mention in the novelization of "The Rise of Skywalker," remain the only two references for such a significant piece of worldbuilding.
It's strange enough that it's not depicted in the film, but the true absurdity of Palpatine's "Fortnite" broadcast is that, after five years, it's virtually lost to history. This may seem odd for an event that's only been around for half a decade, but it's true: you can no longer participate in this "Fortnite" event, and it exists only in player recordings. The text of the broadcast itself, at least, can be found in the novelization of "Rise of Skywalker"—provided by Lucasfilm, not specifically for "Fortnite" or the book—but it's not the same. A piece of "Star Wars" history (scorned as it may be!) exists in an awkward state between "Star Wars" as a continuous text and "Star Wars" as a brand entity, residing just as awkwardly in a similar state of existence. The deceased speak, but they also remain silent.
Perhaps this is for the best that this event, among many since the "Star Wars" canon was overhauled, serves as a standout demonstration of the fallacy that has become "Star Wars"' obsession with continuity over the past decade. It was always a falsity, despite Lucasfilm's claims, that "Star Wars" would continue to evolve and develop with the same significance granted to any given book or comic as a TV show or movie. We aren't back at the levels of retcons and recontextualizations as old EU was, but we've had numerous instances where modern "Star Wars" can't align with itself over the past decade. Indeed, we're experiencing a similar predicament as "Marvel's Battle of Jakku" comics right now, which embellish a previously canonized story based on parts of a previously canon video game that is no longer accessible, preserving history even as it writes over it.
Nothing genuinely matters to "Star Wars" canon beyond the moment it must, beyond what is now established in the primary series of nine films (including Palpatine's speech by proxy). And yet, in that sense, everything is important: a "Fortnite" event you can no longer access is as crucial to the climax of the Skywalker Saga as the movie that tells that climax, especially given the lengths "Star Wars" media has gone to retroactively justify it in the years since. And perhaps that's an equally essential message to convey to "Star Wars" fans, so consumed with the truths of its universe as they so often are, as recognizing that somehow, Palpatine returned.
In the future, discussions about unusual events in "Star Wars" continuity might include the digital resurrection of Darth Sidious in a "Fortnite" special event. This event, now virtually lost to history, served as one of the only two legitimate sources for Palpatine's return after five years, as depicted in the novelization of "The Rise of Skywalker."
As technology continues to shape the entertainment industry, we may witness more unexpected collaborations between movies like "Star Wars" and popular video games, much like the "Fortnite" special event that introduced Darth Sidious' return to the galactic stage.
