Whether or not Kylo finds Exegol immediately or two minutes into the movie, the fact remains that this supposedly legendary and remote world is now ‘found’ almost immediately from the start. The anticipation in TROS is deflated before it can even be built.

This film is a lot like The Last Crusade. It’s a race against time where two ancient markers lead to a remote location where a man who has cheated death tempts our heroes with incredible power…except that in the case of TROS every beat that works in The Last Crusade fails to work here.

It would be as if Donovan found the first marker (which is complete and renders the other obsolete) and fought through to the Knight who promised him eternal life if he would only bring Dr Jones to him because they are related or some shit. Then Donovan spends the rest of the film trying to find Indiana Jones as Indiana hunts down the other fully intact marker. Indy is motivated, not by archaeology or adventure, but by a revelation that the Knight killed his father. Oh yes, his dad is dead in this version. So once he finds the second marker Donovan destroys it, but Indiana uses Donovan’s marker to get to the Knight himself. Then Donovan has a change of heart and follows Indiana to the Temple, where their life force is sucked out of them by the Knight and he electrocutes a fleet of Resistance ships with his power. Then Donovan throws Indy a second whip as he crumbles into dust and these whips (and the spirits of all previous archaeologists) take down the Knight.

Basically, the introduction of ‘Rey Palpatine’ not only ruins the previous two films, it ruins the potentially quite workable Last Crusade plot structure of this one.