I mean, it’s been continuing since right after Return of the Jedi with the old Marvel comics, and of course in the nineties with Heir to the Empire and Dark Empire. Ever since I discovered the EU when I was a kid I’ve been fine with the continuation of the saga.
This is my opinion as well.
The comics transported the OT-story into a more mature level.
In ROTJ Luke beginns to be sucked into the dark side which nearly wins over Luke.
The emperor tries to defeat death with his cloning experiments and this makes the character more evil.
I always was looking forward to see some of this EU-comic on the big screen.
Snoke is not that frightening to me as the emperor was.
I think that the emperor would be a connection to the past in the new films, so… yeah, i miss this character. But it seems like Disney plan to erase ALL of the old characters in the sequel trilogy.