Darth Sidious traveled to Mustafar to retrieve his apprentice, who had lost a duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vader lay on the edge of a lava lake, limbs missing and lungs barely able to draw breath. Sidious took him back to Coruscant, where the Empire's surgical droids fitted him with a cybernetic life support system.

Sidious knew that Vader's broken body would make him weaker than before, but tested his apprentice's connection to the dark side by telling him that he had caused Padmé's death. The intensity of Vader's anguish and self-hatred made it clear that he still possessed great power.

Over the next two decades, Darth Sidious transformed the galaxy into the Empire, eliminating rivals and ruthlessly directing the Imperial war machine to subjugate planets that had been beyond the Republic frontier. Sidious mostly ruled through underlings, but sometimes dealt directly with resistance to his rule. He engineered a trap to draw out the Free Ryloth movement, then joined Darth Vader to decimate the Empire’s enemies.

The scattered cells opposing Palpatine’s rule eventually coalesced into the Rebel Alliance, and destroyed Sidious’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star.

At Endor, the Empire neared completion on a second Death Star to replace the one lost at Yavin. The Emperor arrived at the battle station to oversee the final phases of its construction, and to serve as bait for a trap with which he would finally wipe out the Rebel Alliance.

The Emperor took up residence in the Death Star's control room, attended by his advisors and his red-robed Royal Guard. When Vader expressed concern about the movements of the Rebel fleet, the Emperor assured him that he had the situation well in hand.

Luke Skywalker soon surrendered himself into Imperial custody. The Emperor had the young Jedi brought into the Death Star's throne room, and he freed him from his manacles. His goal wasn't to kill Luke, but to turn him to the dark side, and the Emperor launched into a verbal assault of taunts and orders.

Sidious revealed that he had masterminded the Rebel attack, and that the ground crew raiding the Death Star's shield generator would be wiped out by his best troops. When the Alliance fleet arrived, Imperial Star Destroyers began their surprise assault. The Emperor then played the biggest card of all. Giving the Death Star's gunners the order to fire the battle station's superlaser, the Emperor watched with glee as Rebel warships exploded one by one.

The pressure proved to be too much for Luke. He gave in to his rage and lashed out at the Emperor, but Darth Vader intercepted Luke's lightsaber blade. Luke and Vader fought while the Emperor looked on approvingly.

But despite his foresight, the Emperor had misjudged the offspring of Anakin Skywalker. Luke knocked Vader onto his back and severed his sword hand, but then he brought his emotions under control and tossed his weapon aside. "You've failed, your highness," he told the Emperor. "I am a Jedi, like my father before me." Knowing he would gain no prize today, the Emperor fired a surge of Force lightning designed to torture and kill.

Struck by the intensity of Emperor's power, Luke crumpled to the floor in pain and begged his father for help. As he watched his son's agony, some remnant of the hero who had once been Anakin Skywalker resurfaced within Vader. Seizing his master around the waist, Vader lifted him high and stepped to the edge of the abyss leading to the Death Star's reactor. Vader threw Sidious to his death.

As the Rebels celebrated their victory on the Endor moon, news of the Empire's defeat traveled fast. On Coruscant, crowds thronged the streets to cheer the Emperor's death, toppling a statue of the despot to mark the end of his evil reign.

But Sidious was not so easily destroyed. He returned from death on the legendary Sith world known as Exegol, body broken but spirit unbowed. Buoyed by the faith of Exegol’s Sith Eternal cultists, he plotted his return to power, manipulating the New Republic and forging the remnants of the Empire into the First Order.

He also worked to corrupt Ben Solo, using his puppet Snoke to ensnare the last Skywalker and leave him vulnerable to the dark side of the Force. When all was ready, he declared himself to a terrified galaxy, vowing revenge. He promised Ben – now Kylo Ren – control of his Sith armada and the galaxy if he killed the scavenger Rey and destroyed the Jedi Order.

But Sidious’s real target was Rey – his granddaughter. He had sought her in childhood, sending the Sith huntsman Ochi of Bestoon to retrieve her from his son. But Rey’s parents had hidden her away on Jakku, foiling Ochi and denying Sidious his prize. Sidious planned to have Rey kill him in a Sith ritual that would allow his spirit to pass into her, uniting them and allowing him to rule anew.

After Kylo Ren returned to the light as Ben Solo, Sidious turned to Allegiant General Pryde, giving him charge of the Sith armada and cementing an unholy alliance between Exegol’s Sith cultists and the First Order. Once the Sith fleet escaped Exegol’s turbulent atmosphere, it would be invincible.

Rey made her way to Exegol, and was joined by Ben. But their defiance presented an opportunity for Sidious. The two were a rare and powerful dyad in the Force. By draining their life energy, Sidious could restore his own body as the one true Emperor. Instead of ruling in spirit, he would dispense with puppets and claim dominion of the galaxy for himself.

Sidious blasted the Resistance fleet with Force lightning and boasted that Rey, a mere scavenger, was no match for him – he was all the Sith. But Rey was aided by the spirits of all the Jedi. She reflected Sidious’s destructive power back at him, destroying him and ending his decades of plotting and scheming.