Having watched it, I wanna reiterate how mindblowing it is, the extent to which this community has been able to come together for so many ideas and big visual and audio changes.

TROS is a bummer of a movie for two main reasons:

The backsliding and retconning of character arcs and story points set up by TLJ. I think you deal with this beautifully with your changes, especially your use of Sith whispers, the reworking of the famous Kylo/Rey scenes, and expanding the “for Skywalker” theme that Ascendant started with your great changes to Kijimi and elsewhere. TROS’s reliance on contrived plot points and macguffins is also pretty wack. This edit does a lot to make it more palatable.
The ending. I need to vent about the ending again, because that’s naturally the main thing on my mind, even after watching a fantastic fanedit. So I thank you in advance for your patience 😉

The sequels set up the idea that the failures of the Jedi brought about Vader, and now have brought about Kylo Ren, meaning something needs to change for the cycle to be broken. TLJ states that despite the failures, Luke was wrong for wanting the Jedi to end, and so is Kylo for wanting the past to die. The galaxy needs a legend, and it needs Jedi, but since we know the Jedi of the past were flawed, the new Jedi need to be different, incorporating the lessons of the past failures. They need to transform, they need to change. TROS basically ignores this by making sure Rey is just fulfilling the legacy of all the past Jedi by killing the Sith to death (?).

Not to mention “bring him home” also doesn’t happen. Vader ruins his entire life and body and destroys the whole Jedi order, and, after decades of tyranny, rectifies this by sacrificing himself for his son and the galaxy. But Kylo’s story is different. Bringing home the lost boy is the goal for Ben since TFA. I know he’s like 30, but his arc is painted more like a tantrum-prone teenager who goes down a dark path and eventually realizes the error of his ways, because a girl (his peer) and his parents (!) still relentlessly believe in his goodness. His life is not over once he turns back to the light, it’s just beginning. He’s not Vader, he’s more like Zuko. Buut nope, he dies because that would be too difficult to write (although not in the minds of Driver, Kennedy, Filoni, et al, since they greenlit the Hunt for Ben Solo, but I digress)

There is nothing any fan editor can do to fix this, it can only be resolved by future movies or other types of fan works.

There are also some more unfortunate parallels with the ending of ROTJ, where we see a montage (in the special edition) of different planets celebrating the victory, whereas in TROS we see a montage of destruction. Destruction of the enemy, but still destruction. Where in ROTJ we see Luke mourning his father, and then reuniting with his friends to celebrate victory, in TROS we don’t see Rey mourn Ben, we see her going off to an abandoned desert house to bury the past.

I love your ending where she at least flies off into the sunset with her friends, onwards to new adventures. This is so far the best version of TROS that can be engineered with the material given. Thank you for your excellent work! This was well worth the wait.