The darkness rises and light to meet it explanation seems contrived, underdeveloped, and a cheap shortcut in Rey’s development, such that we can focus on Luke and Kylo, and have a ROTJ like throne room confrontation in the middle chapter, which sees Rey being evenly matched with Kylo, despite the fact that she only learned about the Force a few days earlier, and Luke has taught her very little, aside from telling her the Jedi suck. The explanation for her sudden rise in power is just too thin, making Kylo seem weak by comparison, and no attempt is made to make it fit into existing canon. Like the FO’s unlimited resources, and Snoke’s ascension, it’s just pulled out of thin air, and we’re supposed to be entertained enough to ignore the undercooked nature of these story developments. It seems even the creators realized this, when they introduced the idea of Rey downloading the know how from Kylo’s mind in the novel.
This is how I felt watching the first film.
But here’s the problem: each generation of Star Wars usually consists of 3 films. But nowadays we’re used to epic franchises that span over multiple installments in order to build up characters and set up the story. Take The Harry Potter series and the MCU for example.
With Star Wars, Disney has to compete at that same level of epic grandeur in far less time. Not to mention they want to fulfill some degree of expectations and familiarity to fans: Deathstar 3.0. Darth Vader Jr, Rey being Han, Obi-Wan AND Luke in the first film, etc.
I don’t know if I’d site the problem with the ST as Rey being a Mary Sue. Instead, I see it more as a problem with trying to give fans what they want, trying to make a profit, and trying to do something new to stay relevant.
The explanation for the rise of the First Order in the first film seemed pretty thin. It’s just fast tracked and glossed over so we can get a story that’s almost the same as the original trilogy.