I prefer the worldbuilding and general premise of this trilogy over the sequels we got, by a large margin. However, bringing Maul back would have been a big mistake and would’ve been very confusing for people who are only familiar with the movies. He’d been absent since Episode I, as far as most people are concerned. Him showing up again, and audiences having to watch an animated series to fill in the gap, would be very off-putting for people.
In a way, I’m glad George’s sequel trilogy didn’t get made, since if it was written and created by the man himself, it would be harder to disregard. And he didn’t seem to have a firm idea of what he even wanted the sequels to be (though neither did Disney and Lucasfilm, to be fair). I think a sequel trilogy was something George would toy with and write notes on every few years, but I doubt he ever would have gone through with it, since he’s getting up there in years, wants to spend time with his family, and ultimately, he had more of a story to tell going backwards in time than forwards.
It reminds me of how J.R.R. Tolkien actually started writing a sequel to Lord of the Rings. He wrote the first couple chapters, then scrapped the project when he realized
a) It was depressing and ruined the bittersweet ending he had created
b) It wouldn’t contribute anything substantial or insightful to the Middle-earth mythology. The story was complete. Anything post-LotR would have been anti-climactic.
I think, on some level, George knew his sequel trilogy was never going to happen by his own hand. It was all just ideas and notes. But he did certainly feel blindsided when he realized Disney wasn’t using his treatments (whatever those treatments entailed). Bob Iger himself made that clear, and I’m sure he softened George’s reaction when he described it. I imagine George was fuming. The fact is, Disney didn’t want to spend any time pondering or formulating what their sequel trilogy was going to be. They wanted to push it out as quickly as possible. It was never about the story to them.
I totally agree. Moreover, from 2005 onwards George constantly repeated that the Skywalker Saga was over, that Return of the Jedi was the conclusion, that he didn’t want to write post-ROTJ stories because the Expanded Universe authors had already done that with comics and novels, and that basically Revenge of the Sith would be the last film in the Saga. So, I really doubt that he would have made any more films. Maybe he could have created some spin-off not related to the Skywalker family, but he certainly wouldn’t have created any more Skywalker-based movies, because he constantly repeated for years that there would be no Episode VII, and that the main Star Wars saga is the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker, which begins with The Phantom Menace and ends with Return of the Jedi. The fact that he developed ideas for the Sequel Trilogy doesn’t mean that he would put them into practice. To be honest, I’m glad none of this has ever been put into practice. From a Lore perspective, I like the ideas that George was developing (Luke rebuilds the Jedi Order, Leia becomes the Chancellor of the New Republic, the criminal syndacates try to overthrow the New Republic and make their own interests, etc.). But making Leia the Chosen One is an abomination in my opinion, and bringing Darth Maul back is a colossal idiocy, which I never liked even in TCW. I greatly prefer the Old Expanded Universe post-ROTJ stories over this.