Bingowings said:
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.

I’d agree with that. I’m nearly novel/NPR-only myself. At least I’ll have some sort of backstory to watch if I want. Because I’m unfamiliar with the prequels, I most likely won’t know when they’re being referenced anyway. There may have been some prequel references in The Force Awakens that I didn’t know about. I’m fine with that.