Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker reveals the Emperor has returned and is building an army on the planet Exegol, where a crowd of hundreds, if not thousands of followers, worship the Sith Order and Darth Sidious. While the movie doesn’t explain in detail who these followers are, The Rise of Skywalker's visual dictionary and novelization name them as the Sith Eternal, a faction dedicated to bringing about a new Empire. Their creation was decades before the sequel trilogy, and their influence went beyond their home planet.
After the deaths of Darth Vader and Darth Sidious, the Sith Order was destroyed, and the Jedi prophecy of the Chosen One was fulfilled. However, deep in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, a group of cultists on the planet Exegol still believed in the Sith religion. They kept working in the shadows to install a new Empire once again ruled by a Sith Lord. For decades they built a new fleet of Star Destroyers, infiltrated the First Order, and influenced Kylo Ren’s path to the Dark Side. They sought and utilized many secrets of the Dark Side of the Force, indoctrinating the entire population of Exegol to do their bidding. And they did all of this under the guidance and orders of Emperor Palpatine himself.
As he fell down the reactor shaft of the second Death Star, the Emperor transferred his consciousness to a clone body created on Exegol. However, it became quickly apparent to the Emperor and the Sith Eternal that clones could not sustain him for long, their bodies eventually decaying beyond usefulness. The cultists continued to experiment, hoping to find the right formula to fully restore their leader. One of the clones managed to survive but could not wield the force. Instead, Darth Sidious used him to continue his bloodline, and the clone eventually married a woman and fathered Rey.
Perhaps knowing that, without a proper body, he could not rule the First Order, and his plan wasn't yet ready for him to reveal his survival, Sidious ordered Sith Eternal to create Snoke. One of Snoke’s goals was to prepare Kylo Ren to rule the Sith, testing his commitment to the Dark Side. Another servant of the Sith Eternal cult was Jedi-killer and Sith assassin Ochi of Bestoon. It was Ochi who sought the Emperor’s family and killed Rey’s parents but couldn’t retrieve her in Jakku before dying. After Rey became a Jedi, since the cultists failed to give him a proper body, the Emperor decided she would be his perfect heir. Once Rey arrived at Exegol, he gathered the cultists to perform a ritual that would turn her to the Dark side and give her the Throne of the Sith.
Meanwhile, the army built by the Sith Eternal fought off the Resistance forces on the dark skies of Exegol. In the end, Rey channeled the spirits of all Jedi and destroy Darth Sidious. The ensuing explosion of Force energy killed the Emperor and wiped out all the cultists in the room. With the First Order also defeated, the Sith Eternal cult was completely destroyed along with their leader. But who knows for how long? The Emperor always knew he would be betrayed by Vader and created the Sith Eternal as a contingency plan. Darth Sidious planning for another defeat wouldn’t be surprising.
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