Thanks for the update, Sherlock, warms my heart to know you’re still working on this! I’ll admit, I’m more a fan of the “Rey waiting for Kylo” option with the ending, since an ambiguous ending is different enough from RotJ & it works as a meta-commentary for the franchise in general (“where do we go from Episode IX?”).

I’d hate to give you even more visual work to do, but I floated around the idea on other threads of incorporating the fan film “Force of Darkness” into the beginning, like with joshuabri’s edit. The idea being Kylo has an “ESB cave” scene as he picks up the Wayfinder has to fight Vader to get it, but here’s my spin: recolor Vader’s lightsaber blue & get a Christensen/Matt Lanter sound-alike.

The idea being that Kylo has to fight Anakin Skywalker to get the Wayfinder, who manifestation is filtered by Kylo’s view of Vader. New dialogue could be added to help better set up the idea that Palpatine’s still out there even if we’re not explicit, & the image of Vader holding a blue lightsaber would just be really cool to see.