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How would you have stopped the return of the Empire in Star Wars?

John Doe

Avenger
Jan 24, 2018
3,443
Spoilers for Ahsoka

Leaving aside the return of Thrawn with a zombie clone army from a different galaxy because there is no planning for that.

So, Emperor and Vader are defeated, the Empire is no more and its the first day of the New Republic.

How do you reintegrate former Imperialists into Society? I think Mandolorian and Ashoka showed that the New Republic failed at this in some regards.

Is the solution to just not have a New Republic? Is the Galaxy too big to fall under one government? We already see how planets outside of the New Republic are left to fend for themselves. Would the lack of a New Republic make it a free for all in the Galaxy?
 
Cruxist

Cruxist

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,827
SweetNicole said:
www.nationalww2museum.org

The Nuremberg Trials | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

After the war, Allied powers—United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union—came together to form the International Military Tribunal (IMT). From 1945 to 1946, Nazi Germany leaders stood trial for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit any...
www.nationalww2museum.org www.nationalww2museum.org
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Yeah, it's this. It's not like postwar Germany where you had to have former Nazis in the government because basically everyone was a former Nazi (painting with a broad brush here but still). Take that Ahsoka foundry guy, they could've found a non-imperial to do that job. They just didn't.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,082
Make sure that history remembers the empire as it was.


2018121403240021stormwwezy.gif
 
Qikz

Qikz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,506
Cruxist said:
Yeah, it's this. It's not like postwar Germany where you had to have former Nazis in the government because basically everyone was a former Nazi (painting with a broad brush here but still). Take that Ahsoka foundry guy, they could've found a non-imperial to do that job. They just didn't.
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I'm not sure you understand the scale here - there would have been millions of members loyal to the empire - they likely did hold trials for the high ranking imperials, but your average soldier and office worker still would have had to somehow re-integrate into society, just as the previously nazi supporting and voting citizens did in Germany. Also as shown by the Clone Wars the Empire didn't suddenly start being evil overnight, it was decades of planning by Palpatine, he twisted the minds of most of the republic by setting the Jedi up for a fall.

The way you do it better than as shown in the New Republic in the stories so far is you ensure that everyone actually gets their names back and gets a proper place of work, give them a better thing to believe in than what they'd spent being conditioned to believe. Show them better than they had, show them every reason what they were taught to believe in was wrong - in Mando it shows that they were sent to reintegration camps and then given menial jobs while they still had to be referred to as numbers. That's not how you change people.
 
Bengraven

Bengraven

Member
Oct 26, 2017
26,896
Florida
The Empire should have never come back. And the First Order is basically Empire flunkies, just like Thrawn.

The different surviving factions of Imperials should have just taken over their own planets and eventually another planet, sick of the Senate, should have started their own Union or Confederacy that would eventually try and take down the Republic, aided by some older Imperial leaders, but not beholden to Palpatine's rules or legacy. Not even Star Destroyers or TIE Fighters, their own fuckin thing. And then some of the more warlordy planets can have some retrofitted hot rod Empire tech like SSDs or whatever, but they'd be a cool outlier, not the norm.
 
Qikz

Qikz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,506
Hollywood Duo said:
Galactic Republic does not work flat out.
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It literally did for thousands of years. Palpatine was the only reason it failed in the end. The New Republic was just shit though.

The galactic republic worked just like eventually I believe a world government would as well, but we're sadly 100s of years away from that as people still feel their slice of land is more important than a different slice of land even though we're all the same species.
 
red mage

red mage

Alt-Account
Banned
Aug 17, 2023
2,300
The New Republic didn't fail because of the Nazis

It failed because Palpatine had a secret lab on a secret planet that was populated with millions of followers secretly building thousands of Death Star Destroyers
 
Xbox Live Mike

Xbox Live Mike

Prophet of Truth
The Fallen
Oct 29, 2017
2,435
USA
They let too many bad guys get away with a slap on the wrist while only asking them gently not to do anymore bad things. Its the batman paradox where bad things happen because batman catches bad guys, the bad guys escape and cause mayhem. Rinse and repeat. Get rid of the bad guys.
 
mael

mael

Avenger
Nov 3, 2017
16,826
Would have been way more interesting to see Balkanisation happen in the Star Wars galaxy but I guess it was easier to get a rewarmed plot :/
 
McNum

McNum

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,195
Denmark
I would also add that while demilitarization is a laudable goal, perhaps wait until you actually won the war with doing so. As long as there are still ex-Imperials in big old dagger-shaped capital ships being a a threat out there, you need your own fleet.

Decommissioning your military when you still need it is a losing strategy.
 

manifest73

Member
Oct 28, 2017
518
I would have declared the extended universe non-cannon just like they already did. Then I would have hired someone with a creative vision to take the franchise forward into the future instead of a hack like JJ Abrams.
 
Nooblet

Nooblet

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,637
Qikz said:
I'm not sure you understand the scale here - there would have been millions of members loyal to the empire - they likely did hold trials for the high ranking imperials, but your average soldier and office worker still would have had to somehow re-integrate into society, just as the previously nazi supporting and voting citizens did in Germany. Also as shown by the Clone Wars the Empire didn't suddenly start being evil overnight, it was decades of planning by Palpatine, he twisted the minds of most of the republic by setting the Jedi up for a fall.

The way you do it better than as shown in the New Republic in the stories so far is you ensure that everyone actually gets their names back and gets a proper place of work, give them a better thing to believe in than what they'd spent being conditioned to believe. Show them better than they had, show them every reason what they were taught to believe in was wrong - in Mando it shows that they were sent to reintegration camps and then given menial jobs while they still had to be referred to as numbers. That's not how you change people.
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What I don't understand is why the Empire had followers/loyalists etc. We never really see the supposed "upside" that the loyalist think the Empire brings about i.e. the reason for their fanaticism. Palpy took the power and then proclaimed himself emperor and he had the big guns through the clone army to get everyone in line. But day to day workings, we see regular people just be Empire loyalist. And it can't just be due to devotion to Palpy.

I think the closest we saw to the "other side" of life was in Andor with the whole Dedra, Syril plot. And I think from their perspective the Empire brought order, but was it really lacking before in the Republic era? The galaxy certainly wasn't the wild west and it's not like the Empire is able to control everything everywhere in the galaxy. And these type of people (maybe not Syril) you'd expect to flip to the New Republic with shift in power. Hell Courscant is even shown to be barely any different during all this time pre empire, empire, and post empire.
 
Fubar

Fubar

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,724
The books, especially Alphabet Squadron and the Leia book(s), point out so many problems. Putting Imperials in essentially POW internment camps, driving them to become more desperately angry and basically creating a new insurgency, at the same time that a significant portion of the government basically wants peace (and the illusion of it) so badly they're demilitarizing and standing down for no real reason.

It's ridiculous.

The old canon, for all its problems, laid out a couple great things. Mainly: the Imperial Remnant is going to linger for a very, very long time. They're just far too large and have too many resources. Guerilla warlords are hard to track down, but ramping up the military in the short term to create large hunter-killer fleets to track down Imperial forces (not the one-offs, but the small-to-large fleets hanging around) is the only thing that makes sense to me. Not one captured star destroyer with three squadrons of starfighters that have the whole task of hunting down all imperials.

There are trusted Rebels and Republic forces, consolidating numbers and putting them on the offensive versus defending is the right way to go. Especially if they're able to clean systems of corruption and slavers and Hurts and whatever else. Make allies in "forgotten" systems versus returning to the Republic's shitty status quo of abandoning large swathes of the Galaxy as being too far from the core. Expand Republic territory, organically grow the military with volunteers from those liberated systems, and go from there.

When you're absolutely confident the Imperials are gone, that's when you can start to demilitarize. Not after a battle of Jakku where you literally see half the massive fleet just disappear. They didn't die. They left. They're still out there.
 
Sagroth

Sagroth

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,842
It's pretty clear in the Star Wars universe that the vast majority of galactic upheaval is caused by Force users, and also eventually quashed by Force-users in some capacity. It's also clear that the Jedi are woefully inept at prevention. So I'd push for a unification effort of sorts across other Force disciplines (Matukai, Baran Do, Tyia, etc), opening a free exchange of ideas and philosophies. Also: a broader support network for Force adepts (especially children) - nobody should be taking children away from their parents and teaching them to ignore their emotions and avoid bonds with others.
 
BlodiaMkII

BlodiaMkII

Member
Jan 5, 2019
132
Galaxy is a big place, don't think you can stop that kind of thing. You could try a spy network but at that scale it's like a game of telephone on top of potential for McCarthyism. You could just keep a massive self defense army, but again at that scale there'd be too much temptation to justify the cost.

Honestly an AI Foundation setup at the edge of the galaxy setup to monitor goings on and build countermeasures perceived threats to the Republic would be my idea. Find a way for only a bona fide Jedi to unlock it and you're in business.
 
Qikz

Qikz

Member
Oct 25, 2017
12,506
BlodiaMkII said:
Galaxy is a big place, don't think you can stop that kind of thing. You could try a spy network but at that scale it's like a game of telephone on top of potential for McCarthyism. You could just keep a massive self defense army, but again at that scale there'd be too much temptation to justify the cost.

Honestly an AI Foundation setup at the edge of the galaxy setup to monitor goings on and build countermeasures perceived threats to the Republic would be my idea. Find a way for only a bona fide Jedi to unlock it and you're in business.
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At that point you've just come the Empire yourself if you're spying on your own people that much.
 
The Quentulated Mox

The Quentulated Mox

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Jun 10, 2022
4,503
I guess I wouldn't have gone immediately back to exact same openly corrupt and venal neoliberal government that facilitated the Empire's rise to begin with.
 
thermopyle

thermopyle

Member
Nov 8, 2017
2,987
Los Angeles, CA
Have a strong central government and standing military with a vast intelligence apparatus to root out Imperial Remnants. Don't stick your head up your ass thinking everything can go back to being like the old Republic.
 
BossAttack

BossAttack

Member
Oct 27, 2017
43,036
Digital Dinosaur

Digital Dinosaur

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,069
Rita Repulsa's Moon Palace
I'm not sure you could in-universe because in this regard Star Wars is pretty realistic: capitalists don't care about the return of fascism as long as their profits stay up.

And it's clear that the Empire was extremely profitable for the absolutely gargantuan industries that must exist to manufacture the insane amount of war materials needed to control an entire galaxy.
 
Ambient

Ambient

Member
Dec 23, 2017
7,121
No matter what the Empire or whatever tyrannical power will never truly die. Palpatine will always be the puppet master behind everything as we've seen in the prequel, original and sequel trilogy. It doesn't matter if it's 10 or 10,000 years he will always be there in body or spirit. He literally explains that he has cheated death so why would that power suddenly cease? That is the main takeaway for the Star Wars franchise as a whole.
 
Parthenios

Parthenios

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
13,616
As the lore currently stands no one could have prevented the return because Palpatine somehow returned/never died. No matter what happened in between Sheev would have popped out regardless.
 
Khanimus

Khanimus

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
40,232
Greater Vancouver
Well apparently the show's explanation is that the New Republic is the stupidest, most incompetent collection of people you've ever seen.

So for starters, I wouldn't do that.
 
McNum

McNum

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 26, 2017
5,195
Denmark
The New Republic has another problem, too. It was founded by The Alliance to Restore the Republic, or the Rebel Alliance for short, but to be blunt, they likely never expected to actually win. They were outgunned a thousand to one and that's being generous to the Rebellion, victory through conventional warfare just wasn't an option. And then Darth Vader had a son who managed to turn him and get him to assassinate the Emperor. And the new Death Star got blown up, too.

All of a sudden, the rag-tag bunch of Rebels whose only connecting tissue was to fight the Empire had won. Like a dog who managed to catch the car. They weren't ready to win. But as The Alliance to Restore the Republic, they did just that. And then it fell just like the Republic did. To the same guy, even! They had learned nothing from the fall of the Republic, and it turned out that the skills needed to mount a Rebellion against a galaxy-spanning Empire aren't the same as those you need to run a Republic.

That they messed up the transition back from Empire to Republic is honestly no surprise.
 
red mage

red mage

Alt-Account
Banned
Aug 17, 2023
2,300
Ambient said:
No matter what the Empire or whatever tyrannical power will never truly die. Palpatine will always be the puppet master behind everything as we've seen in the prequel, original and sequel trilogy. It doesn't matter if it's 10 or 10,000 years he will always be there in body or spirit. He literally explains that he has cheated death so why would that power suddenly cease? That is the main takeaway for the Star Wars franchise as a whole.
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They destroyed his secret base in TROS
 
skeezx

skeezx

Member
Oct 27, 2017
20,187
if disney/lucasfilm handed me the keys i'd just loosely do what the Thrawn trilogy did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but as much as everybody hates it, if Palpatine was around the whole time (along with a whole sith planet) there's not much you can do about it
 
Yukari

Yukari

Member
Mar 28, 2018
11,716
Thailand
They never gone
- In Universe Reason.
Many Star Systems prefer Empire over Republic.

- Real life Reason.
Empire Toys/Merch sold pretty well.
 
-JD-

-JD-

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
3,475
Send in the ewoks and gungans. That's really all it takes, the Empire is pretty dumb and only succeed because the good guys are even dumber.
 
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