I’m becoming concerned that this isn’t going to be as stand-alone as I’ve been hoping. Star Wars, under and because of Lucas, has long since become a convoluted, shrunken universe, incestuous mess. That’s what turned me away from the film/Lucas franchise and into the Daley and Zahn EU. New characters, new storylines, new worlds.
I understand Rogue One can’t be completely free of 1983-2005, but it now looks to be shaping up as some sort of Kumbaya for all the fractured fan bases.
It looks like it’s becoming the new episode 3. In that the resolution is mentioned in the crawl of episode IV and it seems to belong more to the world of the OT without totally dismissing the prequels. So yes. Not stand alone at all. To be honest I’m okay with having three other films I can pretend are THE prequel trilogy. So an Obi-Wan in exile film or an Admiral Akbar movie wouldn’t hurt if they were good films. Television novels and comics are better for expanding universes in my opinion.