The Emperor's Lost Series: Ian McDiarmid Reveals the Palpatine Show George Lucas Almost Made
Decades before Disney took the reins of the galaxy far, far away, George Lucas pitched Palpatine actor Ian McDiarmid on a Star Wars television series that would have charted the Emperor's rise to power “like Hitler's.” Speaking at Spacecon 2026, McDiarmid revealed the never-made project — widely believed to be the legendary Star Wars: Underworld — and that Lucas even floated letting him direct an episode.
Long before the Disney era reshaped the galaxy far, far away, George Lucas wanted to tell the story of Emperor Palpatine's rise to power on television — charting his ascent “like Hitler's.” That tantalizing detail comes straight from the man who played the Sith Lord himself, Ian McDiarmid, who revealed at Spacecon 2026 that Lucas personally pitched him on a scrapped Star Wars series and even dangled the chance to direct.
The Buzz
This story took off after IGN reported McDiarmid's remarks from his Spacecon 2026 panel — a fresh, first-hand glimpse at one of the most fabled “what if” projects in Star Wars history, told by the actor Lucas wanted at its center.
George Lucas's Pitch Over Lunch
According to McDiarmid, the idea arrived not in a boardroom but over a meal. Lucas, he said, approached him directly with a concept that was radical for its time — long before streaming made prestige Star Wars television the norm.
“[George Lucas] was talking about, I think I can tell you now, a television series. At the time we didn't think about Star Wars in terms of television series. Very speculative. We had lunch one day, and he said, ‘I've got this idea, and I hope you might want to be involved. We could sort of follow the Emperor's progress, like Hitler's, some of that. There might be an assassination attempt, and of course it wouldn't succeed.’”
The promise of an expanded role wasn't the only hook. “It sounded really exciting,” McDiarmid recalled. “And he also said that maybe you could direct one, and then I fainted. But sadly, that didn't come to pass.”
The Series That Almost Was: Star Wars: Underworld
While McDiarmid didn't name the project, the description lines up almost perfectly with Star Wars: Underworld — Lucas's long-gestating live-action series that would have bridged the gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Lucas reportedly developed at least 60 episodes worth of scripts, painting a grittier, ground-level portrait of a galaxy under the Empire's thumb. None of those scripts have ever been produced, and the only public glimpse fans have ever gotten is a brief leak of test footage showing a darker, neon-soaked version of the capital city planet Coruscant.
Why It Never Happened
Ambition, ultimately, was the project's undoing. Prequel-era producer Rick McCallum has called the loss of Underworld “one of the great disappointments of our lives,” while acknowledging it may have been doomed from the start. Individual episodes were envisioned on a scale larger than the Star Wars feature films themselves — a vision that, with the technology of the era, would have pushed costs to a staggering $40 million per episode or more. Lucas continued tinkering with the concept for years before selling Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012.
Star Wars on Screen Today
The irony, of course, is that the Disney era has delivered exactly the thing Lucas once dreamed of: a steady stream of live-action Star Wars television. Yet the spending that defined that boom has cooled in the wake of high-budget misfires like The Acolyte and The Book of Boba Fett. At present, just one Star Wars series remains in production — the second and likely final season of Ahsoka, due to premiere next year. On the film side, The Mandalorian and Grogu stumbled at the box office, while Lucasfilm reportedly views next year's Star Wars: Starfighter as its best shot at reigniting the saga's big-screen fortunes.
Why Fans Are Buzzing
For longtime fans, Underworld is the great phantom of the franchise — a mature, Empire-era epic that existed in scripts and test footage but never on screen. Hearing McDiarmid describe Lucas pitching it personally, complete with an offer to direct, reframes that lost project not as a vague rumor but as a near-reality that the prequel-era team genuinely chased. As Lucasfilm recalibrates its TV ambitions and pins its hopes on Starfighter, fans can't help but wonder what the galaxy's underworld might have looked like had the cameras ever rolled.