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Palpatine has the presence of a collapsing star and the consumptive void that results from it. It draws you in. It takes something from you. It is a flensing, frightening force.
Any plan whose best endorsement is a thumbs-up from Han Solo is trouble.
Oh, sure, it’s lovely to believe everyone has the best interests of the greater good at heart, but to seek power—to want a hand helping steer the galaxy’s fate!—is an act of ultimate ego. It is an act of self no matter how selfless one portrays it. Which means there is likely no conspiracy here except the all-too-common conspiracy of aggressive self-interest.
Good times even when they were bad. And now, Han is with Leia. Hoo, boy. Those two are a pair of rocket boosters firing full-bore. Lando just hopes those two engines are both firing in the same direction—because if they’re ever pointed at each other, they’ll burn each other up.
When they say to one another, May the Force be with you, it is precisely this that they mean: It is a wish that when the time comes to leap into the void and to make a decision based on instinct and trust, you are rewarded for that act and not punished. The hope is that if you meet the galaxy halfway, it meets you in the middle and carries you the rest of the distance.
But Palpatine had one in the navy who knew something of the Unknown Regions: Admiral Thrawn, an alien with ice-blue skin who came from beyond the borders of the known galaxy. Palpatine only kept that one around because of what he knew of traversing those deadly interstices. Much of what Thrawn knew went into the computations of this machine.
