Remember that part of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker when a tired-sounding Poe Dameron tells everyone that “Somehow, Palpatine has returned.” It’s gone on to become a popular meme, which the actor who said it, Oscar Isaac, didn’t anticipate. He also seemed to suggest that, yeah, he thought it was terrible, too.
Released in 2019, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the third film in the sequel trilogy and the last main entry (for now…) in the saga. It isn’t a great movie. One of its biggest problems is that it brings back Emperor Palpatine, via a plot point that played out in Fortnite (really), and has Isaac’s Poe Dameron announce this news to everyone with that now infamously bad line. According to the actor, that bit of dialogue was added at the last minute during a messy production to help tie the film’s story together.
When asked about the line during a recent episode of Josh Horowitz’s podcast, Isaac explained that the “Somehow” line was added during a last-minute round of Rise of Skywalker reshoots.
“Those were reshoots,” said Isaac. “We had to do reshoots. Yeah, because when I look at it, I’m like, ‘Oh, that wig’s pretty good.’ Y’know, I think I’d cut my hair already.”
Isaac further explained that lines and reshoots like that are “surgical strikes” where a director and everyone involved come in and try to “get everything” to come together and work. And on the set of Rise of Skywalker, Isaac says there was a lot of “movement and flux throughout that whole thing.” Still, he didn’t expect the line to become infamous.
“But had you asked me if, at the moment, I thought that [line] was going to be [a meme], I wouldn’t have known,” said Isaac.
He added, “Hey, man, I committed to the exasperation, that’s for sure,” before laughing. So yeah, it seems clear that while he didn’t know at the time the line would become a meme, he did realize how silly and bad it was to shove it into the movie like this. Even Isaac was fed up with Rise of Skywalker at that point.
Oh, and if you were wondering if the Poe Dameron actor had any involvement in the now-canceled Kylo Ren film from Steven Soderbergh, he says he never got to see the script, as he wasn’t involved. But when asked to share his thoughts on a Soderbergh-directed Star Wars movie, Isaac replied: “That would have been amazing, sure. Would have been incredible.”