To understand TLJ, you have to look at how the movie ends. How it ties up the story. Most of the supposed ethos or philosophy of the film stems from things in the middle that that movie itself upends by the end of the film. It takes Abrams mess from TFA and sets up the finale. I’ve had conversations about how TLJ was about let the past die, when the finale clearly says the opposite. TLJ exists as the middle of a trilogy. Johnson wisely kept the point of his story self contained to that film only and he explored some very tight character arcs that he completed. Finn finds a reason to live and fight for the Resistance, Poe learns how to be a leader instead of a hotshot, and Rey takes up the mantle of Jedi and hero and part of the story. The “anyone can be a Jedi” applies more to the young broom boy. But Abrams transferred it to Finn in TROS, though he somewhat failed to make it very clear. Rey’s parents remain nobody. We never learn their names. We learn one of them is the child of Palpatine. But the remain obscure nobodies. In the credits they are Rey’s Mother and Rey’s Father.
So I believe this conversation stems from a misunderstanding of TLJ. Abrams has stated he set out finish the story Johnson had continued. And if you understand how movies are made, Abrams started with Trevorrow’s script and then changed things up. He found something larger to give the story more power and risk and I think it completes the trilogy beautifully. I think the only flawed film is TFA which sets things up rather badly and didn’t give Johnson a lot of room for where things had to go. And he did get Abrams to change a few things so that TLJ would work better. And Abrams was a producer on TLJ. Don’t forget that. So he didn’t come in to put back his story. He didn’t really have one. And bringing back Palpatine was genius. It so echoes the origins of Star Wars and ties things back all the way to Episode I. And unlike ROTJ that ended with Luke being tortured and Anakin’s redemption and throwing Palpatine down that shaft (to die off screen leaving the possibility that he was not completely gone that was explored before), Rey faces down Palpatine and and defeats him in a very Jedi way - by not attacking him, but by defending herself against him and turning his lighting back on him. Luke is touted as this great Jedi in ROTJ and yet he was not the one to deal with Palpatine. He sacrificed himself rather than fight, which gave Anakin a path back, but didn’t really deal with Palpatine except as a side effect. Of all the film endings, TROS is one of the two most satisfying because it is very final. Rey destroys Palpatine and all his followers. There is no one to bring him back this time.
And I think this idea that TROS rewrites TLJ also comes from how some felt about TLJ and not from any actual part of the story.