Okay, bear with me, but I finally figured this out for myself. I have been intrigued by Palpatine since The Empire Strikes Back and have chalked it up to things like him being a great actor or the cleverness required to fool an entire Galaxy into making you king for a day (or 40 years).

This morning, though, I had the Smurfs theme song stuck in my head and was thinking on TV antagonists. In every show, there seems to be someone who is out to get the good guys. Spike, The Claw, etc.

But they never follow through. There is never really one epiphanal episode where Inspector Gadget is utterly thwarted and The Claw rules over all the earth. Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer starts out promising, but then gets besotted with the Slayer and just wants world peace (or the chip out of his head). The only person who seems to actually have broken this trend is Lex Luthor and it took 2 decades and Superman Returns for that to happen.

With such unsuccessful villains, is it any wonder that I admire Palpatine? I don't necessarily like the fact that he is a sociopath who committed genocide and ruled the Galaxy with an iron fist, but at least the man got the bloody job DONE! He did what he aspired to accomplish and I think that's remarkable.

It's like Ollivander says in Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone: "After all, the Dark Lord did great things... Terrible, but great!"