Well you’d just have to look back over a hundred pages to search for the context… I found it! And it turns out that yeah, you made that change very early on, way before TLJ came out:
Here’s another revision of the crawl that I rather like. This one will probably be what I go with.
Episode VII
THE FORCE AWAKENSLuke Skywalker has vanished. In his absence, the sinister FIRST ORDER has risen in secret from the ashes of the fallen Empire.
Failing to convince the New Republic to combat this emerging threat, General Leia Organa mobilizes a covert RESISTANCE to gather allies from the farthest reaches of the galaxy.
Desperate for her brother’s help, Leia has sent her most trusted pilot on a daring mission to Jakku, where a clue has been discovered to Luke’s whereabouts…
And further down the thread you explained your thought process behind the change:
About the third paragraph, a question: why is Poe’s mission so daring ? Is Jakku supposed to be under FO jurisdiction ?
Yeah, I’d let the audience decide whether Poe’s mission is daring or not.
I swapped adjectives around to avoid using ‘secret’ twice.
The theatrical described Poe as daring, implying it’s why he was selected for the mission.I could call the Resistance “brave,” as in the theatrical, and Poe’s mission “covert.” But, I like “covert RESISTANCE.”
So yeah, you changed it because for a good while the first paragraph described the FO as “risen in secret”. Which you eventually trimmed when you inserted the bit about the FO finishing it’s weapon, but that swap on the final paragraph just stuck around. And all of this was done before the added context of TLJ. Sorry if it’s kinda creepy for me to dig up that old fossil, I was just really curious of the origin of that change, and it turns out I was right on the money!