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Long before the current Disney Plus era of Star Wars, it turns out George Lucas wanted to make a TV show centered around Ian McDiarmid's Emperor Palpatine.
McDiarmid himself revealed the news at Spacecon San Antonio 2026, via The Popverse.
"[George Lucas] was talking about, I think I can tell you now, a television series," McDiarmid shared. "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."
While this does sound like a separate project, especially since McDiarmid says it was "speculative," it's possible this could have been part of the Underworld TV show, which would've been set between the prequel and original trilogies and focused largely on Coruscant's criminal underworld. However, it really does seem Lucas had an entirely separate, Palpatine-focused project in mind.
Of course, while Andor season 1 and 2 never actually featured the Emperor on screen, they did deal heavily with Imperial politics, which might be the closest we get to seeing a project like the one envisioned by Lucas. McDiarmid, meanwhile, returned as Palpatine for a cameo in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series.
Next up for Star Wars is Ahsoka season 2, which has a confirmed release window of early 2027. The Mandalorian and Grogu, meanwhile, is in theaters now.
You can keep up to date on everything else the galaxy far, far away has in store with our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows.
