Yeah, it’s not the overly optimistic ending of Jedi where evil is destroyed forever, but honestly some of us don’t like that about Jedi. You can never really get rid of evil. Max talks about it in the film. First the Sith, then the Empire, now the First Order. Evil will always be out there (as it is in the real world), but we can’t just run away. We must face them.

There is a strangeness to it, when you take it as a sequel to Jedi. The problem is, of course, that there was 30 years in between. Typically this would not be the story that would follow the story in Jedi. Jedi sets up the destruction of the Empire, the rise of the new, good power (Rebellion/Republic), and that Luke will be passing on what he has learned. That’s what someone would reasonable expect in a ROTJ follow up. And it’s not like those things didn’t happen - they did, just off screen. It feels like, to me anyway, that there’s a whole other trilogy that happened before TFA and after ROTJ (detailing the beginning of the New Republic and New Jedi Academy and all the way through the rise of the First Order/Resistance and Ben’s turn to the dark side and Jedi Purge). I suppose it’s similar to the OT - there it feels like there could’ve have been a whole trilogy that came before. Now obviously they made that trilogy as the PT but here in TFA we don’t get that in-between so the surprises and mystery of the backstory is restored much like in the OT. In that way, TFA and the ST truly feels like a new Star Wars trilogy for a new generation (unlike the PT which… well you know).

Anyway it’s a story I’m eager to read (whenever they decide it’s okay to make books/comics in that era - unfortunately probably post-EpIX).