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I mentioned this in my review of the movie in the review thread, but this movie’s biggest sin is taking the happy ending of Return of the Jedi away. Effectively retconning it out of existence.
While I still like the movie for what it is, a Star Wars film made by fans of Star Wars, I’ll probably end up considering it along the likes of Expanded Universe tales. Old EU already ripped away the happy end to Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens is no different in that regard. The only difference is this tale is extremely expensive and stars (or cameos) the original protagonist actors.
It’s true that we never see the happy aftermath. But, as far as we know, there were times of relative peace. The Republic seems largely demilitarized if the destruction of a few key planets was enough to weaken it so substantially, indicating that it was probably very much peacetime until these events with the First Order, Knights of Ren, etc took place.
Even though the new EU does indicate that the war was not simply ended by the destruction of the second Death Star, it did indeed serve as the important blow that led to its unraveling. At the beginning of TFA, the remnants of the Empire were not in charge of the galaxy, so I don’t see anything being undone, unless you believed the events in RoTJ would completely secure peace in the galaxy for hundreds of years, etc.