Show Luke’s fall in a flashback. Luke kept the Vader helmet because it wouldn’t burn on Endor. Ben Solo becomes obsessed with it. They agree to dispose of it in a ritual because it’s a negative attachment for the both of them. Luke thanks Ben for showing him the meaning of the doctrine against attachments. During the ritual the helmet is melted with all students present.

Flash forward to Coruscant undercity. We learn that Kylo Ren has disappeared and General Hux is now Supreme Leader. A squad of Stormtrooper defectors are being executed for helping the general populace. Finn and Poe are among the crowd and stage an attack in the central city. Finn is seen leading a group of rebels with a lightsaber. Rose Tico is elsewhere broadcasting Rebel slogans over the attack. The First Order has been facing rebellion on several major worlds. Chewie calls Finn and tells him General Organa has died. Lando appears on the call as well. Poe convinces Finn to leave, and he manages to get off world.

Now on a planet that is not Exegol. It’s a green world with a large black wound visible from orbit. Kylo Ren lands and encounters Palpatine in an amphitheater under a type of world tree. The surrounding land is dead. He is bedridden and being fed a black oil through a series of tubes by his acolytes. Palpatine offers Kylo Ren power, and Kylo accepts. Kylo stays with him a long while.

On Ahch-To several New Republic Senators, old friends, Rey, Finn, and others gather to see Leia buried next to Luke. She continued teaching Rey, and also Finn, after the loss at Crait. Rey and Finn vow to continue the school, whether there is a new Empire or not. Rey goes to the dark side caves, which she has still not understood. She sees her reflections again, but they end this time with an old woman in robes who demands to know her name. When she cannot answer, she is attacked with force lightning. She absorbs the attack with her new doubled bladed saber and turns her back on the dark side ghost, gaining understanding.

Back with Palpatine, he reveals the secrets of how he came to be here. His essence was to be transferred to a clone when he died, but the process was ancient and not understood. Rather than return to the Force, he violently denied it upon his death,