Thought about this a lot, and admittedly I only watched each film once and then tried to forget them.
That being said, as I remember it, the easiest change would be to change the baddy from being Palpitine to instead be Darth Plagueis. As mentioned by Palpitine to Anakin. If you remember he was able to use the force to create life. So he is the emperors hidden master. You could even still use Ian McDiarmid if you wanted. Then I would make the Emperor a clone, and make both Anakin and Ray both creations of Plegueis Just like the emperor said he was able to do. That would in a sense make them related and at least legitimize her being a Skywalker. Again in a sense as that makes Anakin her brother.
One of the points of the story now being that good and bad can’t be predetermined by your parents or your supposed destiny which the sith always shout about. That is a nice message. Pleagueis could have played on her need for a family as he would still be her father, but then it would also more closely echo’s Anakin’s ultimate journey too.
Listen it’s not a lot to work with as the stories were basically set up to fail in my mind by starting with a lazy and ultimately cynical retelling of the original story from the start, probably encouraged by Disney. Then just the hamfisted and missed opportunity of the first film. Never seeing the main 3 characters together. Finally there is the unforgivable steps of destroying the character of both male leads, of which I lead stronger of the belief that this was done on purpose and with malice. And don’t get me wrong I have no problem with a strong female lead, honestly loved Daisy Ridley, was excited when she was cast and feel like of everything on those films she was the biggest lost opportunity. I also hate that she now seems to be typecast as I would love to see her do some other stuff. Also Ahsoka is my second favorite Star Wars character, Luke being the first. So no you didn’t need to destroy the old trilogy and their protagonists to serve the new, and I believe it was agenda driven myself. The T-shirt was a tell, and I don’t care if it was some advertising campaign or not. I have no problem if you feel differently.
I also feel it was a mistake humanizing the storm troopers, the implications change the films when you realize they are all getting slaughtered and most of them are basically slaves. But then this would require an amount of thoughtfulness that I see no evidence JJ Abrams has. The second film is basically and FU to the original films by an overrated director who says as much. Frankly it’s hard to see any of the films any other way then that the people involved had no love for the original trilogy and it was just a big Disney money grab. But whatever I don’t count them anyway and am no longer fans of the people who made them. The niceness thing you can say about the people who made them was that they were amateurish, at least in my mind.
Still my little change at least removes some of the nonsense of Ray being Palppy’s kid. It also lessons the impact of the Emperors surviving which basically make the original trilogy only about Anikan. I mean it can even be explained that Plaguis knew if he had an apprentice he was at risk because of the rule of 2. So he cloned himself and intended to remove the clone when the time was right or something stupid like that. The idea being that the emperor didn’t even know he was a clone. Then Darth Snookie or whatever the fake emperor was in the first movie could be the result of centuries of cloning himself. Bringing balance is about finally destroying him as he has been cloning himself and influencing the galaxy for centuries. Whatever, it’s contrived but still better then what we got.
Truthfully anything is better, but I think the people involved with the property now are hacks. Again I get it if you disagree, this is just MY opinion.