Image Credit: Lucasfilm
Star Wars’ Emperor Palpatine actor Ian McDiarmid opens up about George Lucas’ cancelled Star Wars TV show. The series would have come out before Disney acquired the rights to the Star Wars IP in 2012.

What do we know about the scrapped George Lucas Star Wars show?

According to McDiarmid, the cancelled Star Wars show would have explored Emperor Palpatine’s rise to power. McDiarmid said in a Spacecon 2026 panel (via Popverse), “[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.”

Image credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

Palpatine’s rise from a Chancellor to the evil Empire ruler happened off-screen, between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. The Star Wars franchise has explored the time period between episodes 3 and 4 with numerous spin-offs, including Rogue One, Andor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and more. It’s possible that McDiarmid was referring to a cancelled Star Wars: Underworld TV series also set between episodes 3 and 4, which was supposed to focus on new characters.

Though Darth Vader killed him in Return of the Jedi, “somehow Palpatine returned”, as said by Poe Dameron, in Episode 9, The Rise of Skywalker. The Sith emperor was finally defeated by Rey and Ben Solo, but not before draining Rey’s life force. Ben then revived her through Force healing, a sacrifice that cost him his own life.

All Star Wars movies and TV shows can be streamed on Disney+.