#1 - Emperor Palpatine

As a child of the aughts, I was raised on three things: Pixar, Lego, and Star Wars. Perhaps to those with limited familiarity with the Space Opera, I would actually credit my love of fantasy to Star Wars even more than Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (I’ve always admired Tolkien’s books more for their mythology than their prose- the psuedo Shakespearean dialogue has never meshed with me well). Jedi Knights, Sith Lords, The evil Galactic Empire (and its predecessor, the Republic), wise pointy eared ancient species, the religious/magical nature of the living Force... The world screamed high fantasy, but possessed the spectacle and scope of Military Science Fiction. It bled through cinema, television (at the time, only cartoons- The Mandalorian would have blown my adolescent mind), video games, comics, toys, and novels. No matter what sort of kid you were, during the era of the Clone Wars cartoon, with the prequel and original trilogies finished and seemingly the whole story laid out, there was something for every kid in that classic mythmaking. Star Wars wasn’t what it now is, managed like the MCU in space (Sorry Peter Quill) with a highly organized (if much smaller catalog of interconnecting properities) library and overly original trilogy favoring style. It was raw and wild, a saga traveling from the ancient religions of Jedi and Sith, to the far future filled with red skinned twi’leks and deathstick indulging Skywalkers, moving from childish to adult across different storytellers. The series has been subsequently simplified and tamed by the Walt Disney Company, but the disparate aspects of the franchise are still only loosely connected across the major installments (Skywalker Saga, Star Wars Story anthology films, Dave Filoni’s cartoons, Fallen Order, the Mandalorian, Battlefront, Doctor Aphra, etc). Skywalker isn’t the fiber behind it all- Vader has no presence in Solo or the Mandalorian, and has a passive role in The Phantom Menace. No, the one character who hangs like an inky black shroud over the entire narrative is Sheev Palpatine. In the prequels (and connected media- Clone Wars) he was a cunning manipulator, slowly gaining power by creating situations to force others to give it to him willingly, before destroying almost the entire Jedi
Order. In the original trilogy (and connected media- including Rogue One, Solo, Rebels, Fallen Order, Battlefront, many of the comics, etc) his empire stretched across almost the entire Galaxy,
holding in the maw of the Sith. And even in the sequels (as well as installments taking place after ROTJ, such as the Mandalorian. Also connected media- Resistance. Is that it? Somebody fix that, asap!) in Moff Gideon’s splinter cell, or the reorganized successor that was the First Order continue to carry on the visage, symbology (don’t believe The Boondock Saints, its an actual word) and spirit of Palpatine’s Empire. The character is ironically not the face of Star Wars’ evil, thanks to the fallen Jedi Anakin “Sand Sucks” Skywalker, but from a perspective of the direct mythology and canon, the Emperor is the franchise’s most successful and influential villain. He won the war and ruled for more than twenty years- and even in death, the vestiges of his will wreaked havoc across the galaxy. The Emperor has also evolved quite a bit as a character. In Return of the Jedi the Emperor was a simple character, at long last evolved from a cameo hologram, to a flesh (or what was left of it) and blood face of the Galactic Empire. The long unseen master of the dark side was revealed to have been playing a long game, plotting the death of his own apprentice, and the recruitment of the last Jedi able to stand against him (Ezra Bridger and Cal Kestis were busy, I suppose. Have the books revealed what the former was up to for the original trilogy yet?). His plans were seemingly undone by the films end (not before he revealed what is still the most awesome addition to Force powers, post- Episode V- the ability to shock people with lightning) but not before he made a significant impression on us fans. The strange and almost alien (yet eerily human) face, wrinkled not by age, but the dark side. That hood and cloak, clad like a weak and wizened old man, and like his counterpart, Yoda, holding strength not in a lightsaber or raw physical power, but in mastery of the Force (well, until the prequels at least). Despite what my adulation of the mysterious master of the dark side presented in ROTJ suggests, I believe it was the prequel trilogy that made him Star Wars’ second greatest villain. The revelation of his sham war, created only to grant him increasingly complete power, clouding the vision of the Jedi, by dragging them into something so very much against their nature, corrupting the ideals of the Order, before corrupting their chosen one, and destroying almost all of them through his design. If it wasn’t for the sloppy execution, cheesy dialogue, and problematic acting, the prequel trilogy could have been THE bad guy wins story. As it is, it worked heavily to flesh out this most diabolical of science fiction villains. I got the Pop! vinyl, because the Emperor remains the best fantasy big bad since Melkor.

(Note: this is a resurrection of an old series I planned, now based around exploring every character I decide is good enough to buy a Pop! vinyl of, and why this is so)