I sometimes think it would be better to just remove the episode labels from all of the movies.
That sounds almost treasonous, but when I think about it, it’s actually a brilliant idea. Removing the episode titles would both reduce the inflated importance of the “Skywalker Saga” that caused the sequels to feel so disappointing, and allow for animated and TV content to be incorporated into the movies (like I was suggesting with my “Expanded Saga” idea) without it feeling too jarring.
You know you don’t have to call it The Skywalker Saga, right? That was a cynical marketing term created to advertise/justify episode 9. It seems like everyone here bought it hook, line, and sinker but you literally don’t have to. Just call the movies whatever you want and ignore the sequels.
The term “Skywalker Saga” may have been officially embraced during the marketing of TROS, but it’s been around since the prequels: This thread called the movies the “Skywalker Saga” all the way back in 2005. No matter what it’s called though, there’s always been a sense of inflated importance given to the mainline “saga” movies, and I feel removing the episode titles would help reduce that.
Yes everyone would do well to keep in mind that the first time that anything was called “episode” was with the release of Empire Strikes Back in 1980, where it was abruptly called Episode V with no explanation. Lucas claims to have planned out 6 movies, 9 movies, 12 movies, or whatever, but the other main purpose of it was to hearken back to the experience of going to see serials like Flash Gordon in the theater and starting in the middle with whichever one you happened to catch - if you missed a previous episode, it was just gone. That was also the purpose of having title crawls, to catch you up on any exposition that you probably missed.
The idea of having something missing was intentional. Strictly speaking, the prequels are just as unnecessary to the structure as anything else. They were themselves a fun thought experiment, there was no reason to expect that they might get made.
The idea of episode numbers in general may have been inspired by serials, but I don’t think Lucas ever intended to not make Episodes 1, 2, and 3: Although his plans for post-ROTJ movies fluctuated constantly, he always said that he would make a trilogy set before the OT later on. He even specifically told the EU writers not to set any of their works before the rise of the Empire (except for the Tales of the Jedi comics), since it would contradict his upcoming trilogy covering those events. It was only with the advent of high-quality CGI in the mid-90s that Lucas decided it was finally feasible to show his concept of the Clone Wars in live-action, with the Special Editions being used as a tech demo for some of the things he was planning to do.