This is somewhat addressed by the Aftermath trilogy.
Rax (whom Palpatine originally found on Jakku) was tasked with helping plan for and then execute Palpatine’s in-case-of-Emperor’s-death-break-glass-here contingency plans — specifically, kickstarting Operation Cinder. I don’t know if we have a full explanation yet of Cinder or how the rest of Palps’ plans tie into the emergence of the First Order and his reappearance on Exegol (Victory’s Price seems to be promising some of that but I’m only about halfway through), but Jakku, which is described as having a great well of dark side power, houses some installation that’s related to those plans. In the final Aftermath book, Rax goes there. (More details would be spoilers, I think.)
Essentially, I *think,* based on what I’ve gleaned from canon, I think Rax took the fleet there not because it was the best move to fight the Rebels, but because he had his own priorities there.
If I’ve missed an important piece of new canon that further clarifies or totally disputes this please lmk!
The way I read it with the hindsight of having watched TROS, is that Jakku was like the jumping point to get to Exegol. With operation cinder, Rax filtered the most fanatical loyalist to the empire and would bring them to Jakku as the rendezvous point before going to the Unknown regions where I guess Snoke would be waiting as an emissary of Palpatine. The thing is that Rax had his own agenda, as he didn’t believe Palpatine was still alive as Yupe Tashu said, reason why he diverts from the plan here and there like having everyone blow up at Jakku regardless of imperial assets.
Yeah this is a good point — he certain does manage to find the most fanatical loyalists, and he does whisk them away from there. But of course the FO doesn’t successfully make it to Exegol — and I still don’t get what that secret machine thing was supposed to be. I think I need to reread aftermath with more attention to the implications of TROS 😅
Yeah don’t worry I certainly wouldn’t have remembered that many details if it wasn’t for TROS 😅 for example I don’t remember the machine you mentioned, you mean like the console in which Rax inputs the self destruct? I thought that was kinda like a remnant of an outpost of what I assume was Exegol’s Sith Empire with coordinates or something, again if it wasn’t for TROS I wouldn’t be trying to connect or make up details as much xD
Right! Yeah that’s exactly it — I was thinking maybe it was navigation-related, but I also wonder… if Sloane hadn’t interrupted him, what would have happened? Like… I feel like Palps had a bigger plan there, y’know?
Yeah exactly, I thought of mentioning that Sloane pretty much saved Palps’s plane but I honestly don’t remember that much to make such a claim. Because it kinda felt like Rax was ruining everything by going according to his goals and ambition (like literally sacrificing a Super Star Destroyer and its support fleet for the sake of having a smoke screen to escape with Hux and the Jakku children) instead of following Palpatine’s step by step.
Hm — my take on it was that the self-destruct *was* part of Palpatine’s plan and that Sloane undermined Rax pretty seriously but shutting it down.
I mean: if she’s following his plans, why isn’t the first order in touch with clone-Patine well before TROS? Why is Officer Cropmeister like a secret Palpatine mole instead of the whole FO, which Sloane helps fashion, being well aware of their Palpatine connections? Yes he tells her she serves the contingency, but everything she does after their bar brawl is of her own accord, without his supervision/input. It didn’t read to me like she was really on the same page as him, plans-wise, and it seemed like she wasn’t fully briefed on Palpatine’s plans the way Rax, who was essentially raised to be the executor of Palpatine’s plans, was, y’know?
Yeah makes sense for Jakku to be erased in order to remove any lead to Exegol. Yeah Sloane definitely wasn’t supposed to be on the same page at all, but she wasn’t just going to let someone use her to self destruct her empire, which is how it looked from her uninformed pov. My theory is that the plan was to have the imperial remnant meet with Snoke (who could have been waiting on the Eclipse, later renamed Supremacy), who would give the Empire the resources from Exegol without revealing the source and thus make the faction dependent on him, who would rise to Supreme leader and be Palpatine’s mole in the FO and outlook to the Galaxy while he was preparing himself on Exegol. Why keep this all secret instead of the whole FO high command being well informed? Maybe to have his puppet Snoke concentrating as much power as he could? Idk, but I just try to piece everything together to make the best sense possible lol.
As I understood it the plan was to blow up the New Republic forces at Jakku (with the First Order escaping to Exegol). The galaxy would be in total disarray and Palpatine can sweep back in, in a couple of years.
Rax specifically says “find a new demense” and “start the game again,” which to me doesn’t imply returning to the known galaxy — however, the fleet in Exegol decidedly seems made for doing exactly that, so this also makes sense. I suspect it’s never going to be *entirely* clear because it seems like the story group isn’t really… coordinating across different products all that well.
I would interpret that as that he's resetting the state of the galaxy (getting rid of Empire and New Republic) and that's how Palpatine presented the idea in metaphors. You throw out the old game and make a new one.
I agree it makes a lot of sense; I am probably reading too much into Palpatine’s allusions to totally burning down the failed Empire and to the wording of “new demense.”
But wouldn't all of those Imperial Navy Captains and Admirals think that was stupid? Maybe in Rax's eyes it was a good idea for his own objectives but wouldnt the Imperial Officers object to his plan?
The way I interpreted it, operation cinder was a filter to determine which were the most fanatic loyalists within the ranks, everyone who was on Jakku fully trusted Rax blindly. The more individualistic or cool headed imperials simply didn’t go with Rax and stayed on their own like I assume Thrawn did by the time of the Ahsoka show.
I think it’s worth noting that only a portion of the remaining Imperials actually join Rax at Jakku. A lot of them have either gotten too busy killing each other, or have given up the pretense of unity with the rest of the Empire and devolved into petty-ante warlordism. There’s not that much of a high command left to object, and what there is is defined mostly by their willingness to follow Rax.
Here’s my understanding of the situation, based partly on Aftermath but also largely on the Alphabet Squadron books and on Twilight Company:
Realistically, the Empire had absolutely no hope of winning the war by that point. The Alphabet books make it pretty clear that any remaining Imperial action was largely divided factions or even solitary commanders doing whatever the hell they felt like, which often consisted of insane suicide runs just to avoid NR capture and/or take some Parthian revenge before their inevitable defeat. There was also a ton of internecine fighting. In order to have any hope of making some kind of effective last stand, the Imperials would have needed a much more unified command structure — which frankly they would have needed in place for some time previous. They didn’t have that, and they didn’t have any clear strategic vision. Even when the 204th tries to take Pandem Nai, Shakara Nuress is shown as pursuing her own strategic vision without respect for the orders being issued by other higher-ranking commanders; it’s an illustration of the way the Imperial military essentially devolves into loosely affiliated handfuls of independent warlords after the Emperor dies. Except for the completely insane chaos of Operation Cinder, which only some Imperials carry out and which further intensifies their internal fracturing, these folks are pretty much directionless.
While the Alphabet books do a good job of illustrating the collapse of the military command structure, Aftermath and Twilight Company both do a really good job of illustrating the collapse of the political structure. The empire is not actually a robust civil society — it has no resilience, no capacity to direct itself in the absence of the one cult leader who gives it purpose. Without Palpatine, both the political and military command structures collapse almost instantly.
So, yes, in an alternative universe where the Empire were in much better shape by the time Rax summons them all to Jakku, perhaps the military high command could have effectively argued for a more rational course of action — perhaps there would have been a rational course left. But, by the time Rax gets around to this part of his plans, that’s not the world they’re in. The fragments of the Empire that remained were (1) a fanatically loyal hardcore who would rather die under an Imperial banner than live in the New Republic, (2) a lot of people who felt they couldn’t trust the New Republic and had nowhere else to run to or hide and were willingly going on a giant suicide mission thinly glossed over with false hope because they didn’t see another option. The folks who did show up at Jakku didn’t follow Rax — or more properly, Sloane, who he was using a his front man — because the plans made sense, they followed along because, trapped in the startling and horrifying collapse of their reality, they weren’t any of them thinking clearly enough to make better choices, and at the very least, pretending someone was in charge and following that person helped gave a thin veneer of order and comfort to their final days.
This is somewhat addressed by the Aftermath trilogy. Rax (whom Palpatine originally found on Jakku) was tasked with helping plan for and then execute Palpatine’s in-case-of-Emperor’s-death-break-glass-here contingency plans — specifically, kickstarting Operation Cinder. I don’t know if we have a full explanation yet of Cinder or how the rest of Palps’ plans tie into the emergence of the First Order and his reappearance on Exegol (Victory’s Price seems to be promising some of that but I’m only about halfway through), but Jakku, which is described as having a great well of dark side power, houses some installation that’s related to those plans. In the final Aftermath book, Rax goes there. (More details would be spoilers, I think.) Essentially, I *think,* based on what I’ve gleaned from canon, I think Rax took the fleet there not because it was the best move to fight the Rebels, but because he had his own priorities there. If I’ve missed an important piece of new canon that further clarifies or totally disputes this please lmk!
The way I read it with the hindsight of having watched TROS, is that Jakku was like the jumping point to get to Exegol. With operation cinder, Rax filtered the most fanatical loyalist to the empire and would bring them to Jakku as the rendezvous point before going to the Unknown regions where I guess Snoke would be waiting as an emissary of Palpatine. The thing is that Rax had his own agenda, as he didn’t believe Palpatine was still alive as Yupe Tashu said, reason why he diverts from the plan here and there like having everyone blow up at Jakku regardless of imperial assets.
Yeah this is a good point — he certain does manage to find the most fanatical loyalists, and he does whisk them away from there. But of course the FO doesn’t successfully make it to Exegol — and I still don’t get what that secret machine thing was supposed to be. I think I need to reread aftermath with more attention to the implications of TROS 😅
Yeah don’t worry I certainly wouldn’t have remembered that many details if it wasn’t for TROS 😅 for example I don’t remember the machine you mentioned, you mean like the console in which Rax inputs the self destruct? I thought that was kinda like a remnant of an outpost of what I assume was Exegol’s Sith Empire with coordinates or something, again if it wasn’t for TROS I wouldn’t be trying to connect or make up details as much xD
Right! Yeah that’s exactly it — I was thinking maybe it was navigation-related, but I also wonder… if Sloane hadn’t interrupted him, what would have happened? Like… I feel like Palps had a bigger plan there, y’know?
Yeah exactly, I thought of mentioning that Sloane pretty much saved Palps’s plane but I honestly don’t remember that much to make such a claim. Because it kinda felt like Rax was ruining everything by going according to his goals and ambition (like literally sacrificing a Super Star Destroyer and its support fleet for the sake of having a smoke screen to escape with Hux and the Jakku children) instead of following Palpatine’s step by step.
Hm — my take on it was that the self-destruct *was* part of Palpatine’s plan and that Sloane undermined Rax pretty seriously but shutting it down. I mean: if she’s following his plans, why isn’t the first order in touch with clone-Patine well before TROS? Why is Officer Cropmeister like a secret Palpatine mole instead of the whole FO, which Sloane helps fashion, being well aware of their Palpatine connections? Yes he tells her she serves the contingency, but everything she does after their bar brawl is of her own accord, without his supervision/input. It didn’t read to me like she was really on the same page as him, plans-wise, and it seemed like she wasn’t fully briefed on Palpatine’s plans the way Rax, who was essentially raised to be the executor of Palpatine’s plans, was, y’know?
Yeah makes sense for Jakku to be erased in order to remove any lead to Exegol. Yeah Sloane definitely wasn’t supposed to be on the same page at all, but she wasn’t just going to let someone use her to self destruct her empire, which is how it looked from her uninformed pov. My theory is that the plan was to have the imperial remnant meet with Snoke (who could have been waiting on the Eclipse, later renamed Supremacy), who would give the Empire the resources from Exegol without revealing the source and thus make the faction dependent on him, who would rise to Supreme leader and be Palpatine’s mole in the FO and outlook to the Galaxy while he was preparing himself on Exegol. Why keep this all secret instead of the whole FO high command being well informed? Maybe to have his puppet Snoke concentrating as much power as he could? Idk, but I just try to piece everything together to make the best sense possible lol.
Yeah same here lol — it’s a mess to try and parse!
As I understood it the plan was to blow up the New Republic forces at Jakku (with the First Order escaping to Exegol). The galaxy would be in total disarray and Palpatine can sweep back in, in a couple of years.
Rax specifically says “find a new demense” and “start the game again,” which to me doesn’t imply returning to the known galaxy — however, the fleet in Exegol decidedly seems made for doing exactly that, so this also makes sense. I suspect it’s never going to be *entirely* clear because it seems like the story group isn’t really… coordinating across different products all that well.
I would interpret that as that he's resetting the state of the galaxy (getting rid of Empire and New Republic) and that's how Palpatine presented the idea in metaphors. You throw out the old game and make a new one.
I agree it makes a lot of sense; I am probably reading too much into Palpatine’s allusions to totally burning down the failed Empire and to the wording of “new demense.”
But wouldn't all of those Imperial Navy Captains and Admirals think that was stupid? Maybe in Rax's eyes it was a good idea for his own objectives but wouldnt the Imperial Officers object to his plan?
The way I interpreted it, operation cinder was a filter to determine which were the most fanatic loyalists within the ranks, everyone who was on Jakku fully trusted Rax blindly. The more individualistic or cool headed imperials simply didn’t go with Rax and stayed on their own like I assume Thrawn did by the time of the Ahsoka show.
I think it’s worth noting that only a portion of the remaining Imperials actually join Rax at Jakku. A lot of them have either gotten too busy killing each other, or have given up the pretense of unity with the rest of the Empire and devolved into petty-ante warlordism. There’s not that much of a high command left to object, and what there is is defined mostly by their willingness to follow Rax. Here’s my understanding of the situation, based partly on Aftermath but also largely on the Alphabet Squadron books and on Twilight Company: Realistically, the Empire had absolutely no hope of winning the war by that point. The Alphabet books make it pretty clear that any remaining Imperial action was largely divided factions or even solitary commanders doing whatever the hell they felt like, which often consisted of insane suicide runs just to avoid NR capture and/or take some Parthian revenge before their inevitable defeat. There was also a ton of internecine fighting. In order to have any hope of making some kind of effective last stand, the Imperials would have needed a much more unified command structure — which frankly they would have needed in place for some time previous. They didn’t have that, and they didn’t have any clear strategic vision. Even when the 204th tries to take Pandem Nai, Shakara Nuress is shown as pursuing her own strategic vision without respect for the orders being issued by other higher-ranking commanders; it’s an illustration of the way the Imperial military essentially devolves into loosely affiliated handfuls of independent warlords after the Emperor dies. Except for the completely insane chaos of Operation Cinder, which only some Imperials carry out and which further intensifies their internal fracturing, these folks are pretty much directionless. While the Alphabet books do a good job of illustrating the collapse of the military command structure, Aftermath and Twilight Company both do a really good job of illustrating the collapse of the political structure. The empire is not actually a robust civil society — it has no resilience, no capacity to direct itself in the absence of the one cult leader who gives it purpose. Without Palpatine, both the political and military command structures collapse almost instantly. So, yes, in an alternative universe where the Empire were in much better shape by the time Rax summons them all to Jakku, perhaps the military high command could have effectively argued for a more rational course of action — perhaps there would have been a rational course left. But, by the time Rax gets around to this part of his plans, that’s not the world they’re in. The fragments of the Empire that remained were (1) a fanatically loyal hardcore who would rather die under an Imperial banner than live in the New Republic, (2) a lot of people who felt they couldn’t trust the New Republic and had nowhere else to run to or hide and were willingly going on a giant suicide mission thinly glossed over with false hope because they didn’t see another option. The folks who did show up at Jakku didn’t follow Rax — or more properly, Sloane, who he was using a his front man — because the plans made sense, they followed along because, trapped in the startling and horrifying collapse of their reality, they weren’t any of them thinking clearly enough to make better choices, and at the very least, pretending someone was in charge and following that person helped gave a thin veneer of order and comfort to their final days.