Emperor Palpatine. He was dead. He had to be. He had fallen down the shaft into the reactor blob. The reactor had sent up a burst of energy, caused by the collision of something. But could Palpatine had used the force and pulled off a piece of the wall or something and hurled that into the reactor. Naaaaa. Besides, he would have fallen to his death anyway, once he hit the floor. Although, earlier in his life, when fighting Yoda, he did fall a distance and got up, slowly, but still got up. But what about the lightning to his face. That had to kill him. Except for the fact we can still hear him yelling as he falls, so he wasn't dead by then. But what next. Surly, when the death star blew up, he couldn't have used the force to break through walls into space, where he would use the force to move (as Leia did in The Last Jedi) and attach himself to one of the flying off ships, escaping to the outer stretches of the Universe. And there was no way in the world that from there he could find a new apprentice who, out of fear that his new apprentice would turn on him and be his undoing, as Vader was, and send that new assistant far back to the center of the galaxy where he would do his master's biding, instructing him on every move, and turning susceptible jedi to the dark side..... No. No, it wasn't possible. Palpatine was dead. He had to be.

Or so they thought