Abrams and Terrio are both competent writers, they were just poor choices for Episode IX. They tried to please everyone, make a crowd-pleasing movie that made everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside, but that’s not how it works. Attempting to please all factors involved and injecting your movie with fanservice is never a good idea. It only worked on TFA because of competent character writing from Arndt and Kasdan.
I would argue that TFA didn’t work
People never liked TFA…people tolerated TFA
People were genuinely hoping that future installments would improve the more questionable aspects of TFA
The reason TLJ fell at the box office so quickly and it’s backlash became so violent that TROS barely grossed a billion was because of pent up rage against TFA
People never liked the first order, loathed the resistance, and hoped that the new republic was still alive till TLJ confirmed that it wasn’t and that the resistance and the first order were the main factions
Than the shit storm hit
There is a reason why the final order completely overshadows the first order in episode 9