The problem with this approach either way though is that you have the essentially less well explored Snoke followed by the essentially less well explored Overseer, putting a lot of weight on the idea of Kylo as the primary defeatable antagonist.
I agree … it would, in some ways, be a step backwards. Where it would be even more less connected with not just the trilogy, but the entire saga as well. Not to be the downer or anything, I’m just not sure if making the Palpy replacement be some “bigger” bad sith guy/gal who has no connection to anything that’s been seen since The Phantom Menace till now isn’t the best route.
Man talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. Even if you remove all the palpy stuff to JUST have Kylo be the main baddy, the ending doesn’t quite work and is a bit anti climatic. But I think a lot of people would love to remove the whole palpy thing since it was so badly set up and not really based on anything.
I like the brain storming and maybe something could be thought out/figured out!