It’s so weird how redundant Palpatine and the Final Order are in TROS. It’s like JJ had the idea for TFA “wouldn’t it be cool if there was some Sith mastermind secretly plotting the Empire’s revenge in the unknown regions?” and then because the gist of that idea got diluted in the finished film, he was just like “let’s try it again” for TROS. It’s funny how people say Rian ignored everything in TFA, but he was just going off the way TFA set things up, with the First Order as the Empire 2.0. In the end it was JJ who decided to ditch what was already set up for something else.

That being said, in regards to the topic, I think if they had set up Palpatine and his secret Final Order on Exegol in the first film of the trilogy (and ditched Snoke and the First Order and Starkiller), I wouldn’t really have a problem with it. One of the biggest issues is how much it comes out of nowhere.