He's clearly not the big bad. And as a kid born in the 80s, watching Star Wars as a 10 year old, I never questioned origins about the Emperor because I was too young to care.
Even now watching it, however, it's pretty clear that he's nothing more than a plot device tugging on Vader, pulling him to the dark side to combat Luke trying to pull him back to the light.
The heart of the trilogy was Luke and his father's conflict. The emperor was a tool to help that story. Just like Snoke is a tool to help the story between Ren and Rey.
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