Welp, that totally puts that whole train of speculation to bed.
To be fair, I suppose we do have to acknowledge that Vader-as-father only came in an early ESB script, and Leia-as-sister only existed as an idea for ROTJ, so Star Wars does kind of have this ‘laying the tracks before the train’ approach.
But still, I don’t think that justifies this lack of oversight and planning for what should have been a cohesive trilogy from the start.
EU media will gradually embed Palpatine-as-grandfather in the canon more solidly, but personally I’ll always prefer Rey Nobody, especially knowing how little it mattered to the production team.
All valid points. I very much get where they got the impulse to freewheel it- not wanting to tie themselves down and wanting to recapture some of the ‘free’ atmosphere of the original trilogy, which, like you said, was equally freewheeled original trilogy. It was definitely a mistake.
Major difference was that it was all Lucas freewheelin’ it back in 1980, so there was at least one cohesive goal…whereas it was 3 different directors and writers all mostly ignoring each other for the sequels.