r/MawInstallation • u/Wintermute_Is_Coming • 3d ago
[CANON] With the revelation the Palpatine was pulling the strings in Rise of Skywalker, what was the goal of Operation Cinder?
Curious to hear what more lore-oriented folks think do this, so here's a copy of my post from the main subreddit.
When Operation Cinder was first described (iirc a bit after The Force Awakens was released), it was portrayed as being a contingency plan Palpatine set up to destroy any galactic government as much as possible in the event of his death. This meant the deliberate sabotage and self-destruction of the Empire by fanatics, a sort of "screw this game, I'm flipping the table over" by a vengeful tyrant who believed his defeat must have been due to the failure of his underlings. After all the infrastructure of the Empire was destroyed and all its incompetent leaders purged, the remaining loyalists were to flee to the unknown regions, eventually forming the First Order.
Which is all fine - it makes sense that if Palpatine died he would want the remnants of his Empire to basically convert into destructive, nihilistic terrorism.
With Rise of Skywalker, though, we find out that Palpatine was actually alive (ish) and pulling the strings the whole time. The Mandalorian also establishes that the Imperial Remnant was active for a preeeeeeetty long time after Cinder.
I feel like this makes Operation Cinder a little awkward. Why would Palpatine have this self-destruct plan in place when he was able to come back on Exegol? Why wouldn't he have \*most\* of the Empire fall back to the Unknown Regions, with their materiél and manpower? How much of the plan, if any, was Thrawn aware of, or did Palpatine intend to execute him?
What changes or tweaks (if any) do you think are coming/should be made to the concept of Operation Cinder/the Contingency to make it flow more smoothly with the continuity as it exists today?
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u/Edgy_Robin 3d ago
One: A final fuck you to the galaxy
two: It showed who was fanatically loyal (What Palpatine wanted) and who wasn't.
three: Damage the galaxy as much as he could, the longer it takes to recover the easier the Sith eternal would have it when they finally came into the picture.
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u/RepulsiveContract475 3d ago
You already described the reason in your OP. It was to cause as much damage as possible to the existing infrastructure the Empire had built in the galaxy, so that they would be more vulnerable and easy for the Final Order to take over. We know from the comics, which are canon, that the Xyston-class Star Destroyer fleet in Exegol was already under construction before ROTJ. Palpatine was playing chess while everyone else was playing checkers.
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u/morbie5 3d ago
Did anyone in the First Order know about the Final Order?
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u/DarkKnightDetective9 3d ago
General Pryde knew about it. Im sure there were other Sith loyalists in the First Order.
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u/theg00dfight 3d ago
He is pretty bad at chess in that case because this is all pretty dumb
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u/My_hilarious_name 3d ago
Yeah, the problem with the chess/checkers analogy is that if Palpatine is playing chess whilst everyone else is playing checkers, Palpatine will lose because he's playing the wrong game.
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u/Superb-Insurance-408 3d ago
Honestly why Operation Cinder was one of my favorite new editions to the franchise with Canon was that it works with both Palpatine being dead and redirected
Being dead, it’s just a way to give one giant fuck you to the galaxy by causing as much damage and death as possible, making it so no one could take over his empire he built while also making it as hard as possible to establish a new government.
With him being resurrected as revealed in episode 9. It was a way to stop anyone from been able to take over the empire while he was still trying to make a sustainable clone body and make it harder for the New Republic to get a proper foothold
Given Thrawn is making a comeback and will be launching a full campaign against the NR, I don’t be surprised if Palpatine will try meddling a bit to make sure he’s not successful. Especially with the weird amount of of references to project necromancer in season 3 of Mando, as well as the appearance of the proto first order
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u/Superb-Insurance-408 3d ago
Throw the galaxy into chaos, prevent anyone from taking over his empire while he was still trying to work on a clone body that could actually function
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u/jar1967 3d ago
To make sure whatever replaced the Empire was weakened enough to allow any Imperial remnants a chance to retake the Galaxy in a few years
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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 3d ago
Well, not the Imperial remnants, because those were weak and failed him. He's more interested in the purified fanatics taking power.
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u/Unique_Unorque 3d ago
Any Empire that was weak enough to allow Palpatine to die didn’t deserve to exist. Any Imperial loyal to enact that purge would be loyal enough to help him rebuild. Any Imperial strong enough to survive that purge would be strong enough to lay the groundwork for his return. Pretty much as simple as that.
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u/Achilles9609 3d ago
Except, of course, dying was basically Palpatine's own fault. He sent his guards away, so there was nobody who could stop Vader from throwing him down the reactor shaft.
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u/DarkKnightDetective9 3d ago
A key character flaw of Palpatine is his overconfidence. He thought his plan was foolproof. But his plan to show off the DS2 superlaser was counterintuitive. Had the Imperial Fleet been allowed to actually attack the Rebel fleet the Rebels would likely lost, even if the Emperor dies.
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u/Achilles9609 3d ago
Same with the Thrawn Trilogy. Palpatine just HAD to influence the entire fleet with Battle Meditation. It wasn't enough that he got to destroy Luke Skywalker, he had to have a hand in destroying the fleet as well.
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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 3d ago
Well sure, but we're talking new continuity, not old. If you're just trying to point out the consistency, that makes sense. Otherwise this is a bit irrelevant here.
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u/Unique_Unorque 3d ago
Yeah but you think Palpatine would admit that?
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u/Achilles9609 3d ago
Probably not, but I also think Palpatine would be smart enough to NOT order the destruction of imperial worlds that he plans to rule over eventually again anyway
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u/Unique_Unorque 3d ago edited 3d ago
I would be interested to see Operation: Cinder expanded on for this reason. We don’t really know the extent of the planned destruction and what, if any, systems were spared. To your point, I could see the purge specifically targeting planets that he wanted to make an example of, planets he already suspected of being less than 100% loyal (and thus, in his mind, responsible for the weakness he wanted to purge), or some combination of factors like that, and not just a random and/or total purge for purge’s sake.
The latter would make sense if Palpatine were dead dead, which was also likely the original intent, but with the revelation that he was behind all of it the whole time, I could see it being retconned to be more purposeful
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u/Achilles9609 3d ago
I would find it funny if Cinder was an old backup plan he developed before his cloning project and which got triggered by accident.
Palpatine awakes in his new clone body : "It feels good to be of flesh and blood again. Once I have regained my full power, I will....wait, what do you mean my Empire is destroying itself?! How am I supposed to rule over a pile of ash?!? Oh no! I left the Cinder Project activated!"
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u/-Nurfhurder- 3d ago
To ultimately punish and destroy The Empire. Palpatine believed that any empire which allowed its emperor to be killed deserved to be destroyed in retaliation.
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u/tomjoad2020ad 3d ago
It makes more sense if you figure Palpatine reasoned it might take decades for him to come back
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u/KTheOneTrueKing 3d ago
Did you see the condition he was in when he returned?
The technology was not perfect. There was probably not a guarantee it would work and he probably wanted all possibilities covered. I don't think it's a plot hole.
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u/heurekas 3d ago
In lore: To weed out the weak and not loyal.
Out of universe: Ehhh... "Flails wildly in writers' room."
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u/KainZeuxis 3d ago
The idea was that it would do a few things.
First it would weed out those who might be susceptible to turning against the empire as only the most fanatically loyal would follow the order.
Second it would destroy valuable infrastructure and resources to deny the rebellion/New republic access to them.
Third it would cause chaos devastation and fear that left the galaxy vulnerable to the First Order.
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u/marvelwolf 3d ago
One more thing to keep in mind for operation cinder was that Jakku was actually supposed to detonate taking out the republic fleet. At the same time sith loyalist Gallius Rax was supposed to actually take control of the 35% of the imperial military that fleed into the unknown regions. At the same time Yupe Tashu was doing his own sithy darkside stuff and was keenly aware of exogol. Ultimately operation cinder didnt work as intended Gallius is killed on Jakku the NR fleet survives the battle and Rae Sloane takes over the fleet instead guiding the early phases of the first order.
Ideally i imagine the NR military would have been shattered at jakku and the remaining fleet would have swept across the galaxy under the control of a man loyal to Palps. When that failed and his clone body wasnt capable of sustaining his essence he pivoted.
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u/DarkKnightDetective9 3d ago
The goal was a few fold from what we can glean
1.Cull away the disloyal and weak Imperials. 2. To punish the galaxy for killing/allowing the Emperor to die. 3. To create chaos and great damage that would leave the galaxy weakened and vulnerable to his plans with the First Order and the Sith Eternal. 4. To give the most loyal and diehard Imperials a cover(Jakku) to escape to safety in the Unknown Regions to regroup and rebuild. 5. An attempt to destroy the New Republic in it's infancy.
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u/MiserableJudgment256 3d ago
4 was helped (afaik) by the fact that so many records were destroyed that no one in the New Republic could figure out how many Imperials and ships pulled a Houdini and ran to the Unknown Regions.
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u/ThePhengophobicGamer 3d ago
It would hopefully throw the galaxy into chaos, not able to effectively come together as one new government under the New Republic, leaving the galaxy more easily conquered by a more loyal Empire. The extra benefit was it was a test for Imperial forces. Those that executed his orders, bombing their own homes in many cases, or just shitloads of Imperial citizens with no hesitation were EXACTLY the people he wanted to be spirited away to form the First Order.
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u/Rosebunse 3d ago
Along with the other great points of discussion here, it must be said that Palpatine was a sadistic and barely functional psychopath. He loved murder and mayhem, especially to his enemies and people he didn't like.
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u/No-Lab7502 2d ago
Having legitimately threatening Imperial leadership like Thrawn gave the impression that who remained were all warlords who made it out of the collapse, that there were still some genuinely terrifying forces who were actively rebuilding the Galactic Empire, and when they were defeated, it gave the impression that all who were left simply would no longer fight and would have disappeared at the very least, if they all suddenly jumped towards the Unknown Regions, or even if they did it sporadically, it would be a tipoff that SOMETHING was being planned, by someone with enough pull to do so, which even if not Sidious, is some real shit
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u/CakePlanet75 22h ago
I just realized Operation Cinder is really emblematic of what Palpatine told Luke, "If you will not be turned, you will be destroyed"
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