I just wanted to point out: the Light Side victory pile is the pile of destroyed Dark Side objectives. This doesn't let you grab a LS objective you've destroyed, but rather get back one of your own destroyed objectives. I've seen several people misunderstand that, so just wanted to point it out.

If Palpatine is killed does the objective return to the light side?

If that was the case, the card itself would say so. Objective stays in play and LS has to destroy it once again.

does this mean the DS player would have 4 Objectives in play?

Follow up questions:

Does this card's effect change the number of objectives the LS has destroyed?


Also, is the part of the next force cycle?

The number of objectives that the LS has destroyed are always counted from the number of cards in the LS victory pile. With palpatine being able to take an objective from that victory pile and put it back into play, the number of destroyed objectives remaining is one less.

This version of palpatine is only available for play in the multiplayer DS challenge deck. So no it is not part of the next force cycle and it is not available for the standard 1v1 format.