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SYFY WIRE Robot Chicken

Watch Seth MacFarlane skewer Palpatine's 'convenient' Star Wars return in exclusive 'Robot Chicken' clip

By Tara Bennett
Seth MacFarlane Skews Palpatine's Convenient 'Star Wars' Return in Exclusive 'Robot Chicken' Clip

Adult Swim's Robot Chicken has a long history of taking on Star Wars in its skewering sketches, with three full specials dedicated to George Lucas' space epic. With the conclusion of the sequel trilogy at the very end of 2019, the stop-animation series is catching up, and it's "game on" for the galaxy far, far away again.

Now into its 11th season, Adult Swim's longest running series is currently airing new episodes daily at midnight ET/PT. Among all the madness, there's a sketch that confronts that really confounding plot point in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that finds Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) suddenly returning from The Return of the Jedi dead... just because. Ahead of its upcoming debut, SYFY WIRE has an exclusive look at the sketch, which features Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy, The Orville) voicing the mechanically challenged Palps.

Check out our exclusive clip below:

Palpatine's return remains an eternal headscratcher of a reveal that was supposedly more fleshed out in the novelization of the movie. So we are definitely feeling Rey in this clip as she's trying to figure out exactly how she is connected to him by blood, and why she should care in the first place. When Robot Chicken Rey yells to Palpatine, "Sounds like you're winging it," we've never felt so seen.

Robot Chicken's Season 11 is currently airing at midnight on Adult Swim, with the finale, "Happy Russian Deathdog Dolloween 2 U," debuting on Sept. 24.

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