A major problem with all 3 movies was Rey’s constant winning and Kylo’s constant losing.
A hero and their journey is only as good as the villain and their antagonism.
Imagine if Obi-Wan had WON the very first lightsaber duel back in 1977.
That would’ve killed Vader’s character from the start.
Kylo’s loss at the end of TFA was the first crack. Then losing against Rey again in Snoke’s room. And then being humiliated by Luke. And then losing again to Rey again 1/2 of the way through Rise. Also, her ability to beat Luke while training didn’t help any character progression either.
Rey had no consistent hero’s journey. Yes, yes, you can make all sorts of arguments about scene x or development y, they’ve been done before–the point is that the growth of the heroic character overcoming obstacles isn’t coherent. Since Kylo was neutered as a threat midway through TLJ, they had to use Palpatine to give her a new challenge, which didn’t thematically fit at all from her starting point.
I agree completely. People often forget that Palpatine was brought back mainly out of desperation. TLJ ended with Kylo standing alone as the main villain (Hux having been made a joke), but the films hadn’t done nearly enough to prepare the character to fill that role. So, they had a villain void going into Episode IX, and tried to fix that by transplanting an OT villain into the story.
And of course, having your protagonist consistently outmatch your antagonist is generally a bad idea. There are exceptions, and ways to make an overpowered hero work in a plot, but the sequel trilogy didn’t handle that well. And a Star Wars story really needs a strong villain in order to work.
The sequels treat Rey’s journey as being very similar to Luke’s, when it really shouldn’t be. While Luke’s journey was more about him growing his power, Rey’s journey should have been about her learning to control her innate power. That’s one way you can make a powerful protagonist work. TLJ had some faint hints of this idea, but failed to commit to it.