I’m sorry to keep banging on this drum Hal, but the Duel of the Fates cue during the Death Star II fight still feels very tacked on and out of place to me. It doesn’t really seem to add anything to the scene, in fact the sedate nature of the cue kind of detracts from the tension overall, and from the following music that’s in the theatrical version.

Just like in ESB during Vader and Luke’s fight, much of which had score that went unused, it makes the appearance of the music when Kylo emerges from the waves all the more impactful and ratchets up the tension in the fight. A possible compromise could be to fade out the music after the crescendo where Rey does her backflip, so that the Final Saber Duel cue can have its entrance, but even then that crescendo in the DotF cue doesn’t match that moment particularly well.

I’m not sure what other people’s thoughts on this are but I’d be keen to hear them, apologies if I have missed a bunch of discussion on the topic already.