As for Leia and Chewie not consoling each other: I took as Chewie not realizing Leia already knew Han was dead. I thought maybe it was too difficult for Chewie to bring himself to tell her. Put yourself in Chewie’s shoes. If your best friend died, would it be easy for you to be the one to tell his/her spouse? As for Chewie taking off with Rey to find to Luke, I had no problem with it. Even with Han dead, Chewie would still want to do his duty.
This is honestly the BEST answer I’ve seen for this criticism. I never could quite pinpoint why Chewie didn’t, but after reading this, I fully back this.
Not bad as far as imaginary justifications go, but this still isn’t visible onscreen, and ultimately this would only be satisfactory if it was referenced or constructed in some way in extended footage or the next movie. If Leia knows there’s something to console Rey about, she knows there is definitely something to console Chewie about.
My guess is that it was a not-exactly-successful attempt to show that “Leia knows something”. So fine, maybe we will see exactly what in the next film. But the aggregate is still that whether we are discussing Leia and Chewie or some other events succeeding Han’s death, the effect of his death was really flat onscreen. Which sucked because he proved himself compelling for the entire prior part of the film. I’m not demanding a ten minute funeral scene or something, I’m just saying that we needed to see way more emotional fallout, somehow.
And I stand by the following that I wrote earlier, just because it would be cool and expand Chewbacca’a character:
Chewbacca should for the most part leave the rebellion as a consistent soldier and become a sort of bounty hunter specializing in collecting sith heads, or if that is too NC-17, then sith lightsabers, which Luke or Rey or Finn modify to produce white, blue, or green blades. Chewie can show up at some point in a room that everyone is in and drop an armload of sith lightsabers onto a table while everyone in the room stares at them and goes pale. The modified lightsabers can be given to new jedis in training, and the combo of sith hardware and jedi colors can be a small symbol of the light and dark sides beginning to find balance.
And Chewie’s look should definitely change to reflect his state, maybe more weapons, dirtier fur. Maybe some of the war leaders on Kashyyyk could be used as stylistic references as well, for cultural consistency.