Tremendous potential, tragically squandered.
I loved TFA and TLJ despite them not telling the story I really wanted (the old guard overseeing the New Republic while Luke works to get a New Jedi Order off the ground) because what we did get was so engaging & well-executed, with such great characters and obvious heart, plus great encore performances from Mark, Carrie, Harrison, & Billy Dee. That it started out with a retread of scrappy underdogs versus white-armored military might was unfortunate, but with just enough freshness that it could have evolved as the trilogy continued. While I didn’t like all of Rian’s choices, I’ve come to believe that (with the exception of the Holdo stuff) he did an admirable job of making the most out of what JJ gave him to work with. To me, TLJ feels the closest to something George might have made, warts and all.
Then TROS happened, and singlehandedly killed my interest in the ST era and my investment in the trilogy as a “true” ending to the saga. That move’s problems have been discussed to death here already, so for now I’ll limit my observations to the fact that Episode IX leaves the galaxy in exactly the same state Episode VI left it: an empire defeated, no Republic, and just one Jedi.
Putting all the other questionable creative choices aside, how the powers-that-be decided that was acceptable is beyond me.
It’s far from original at this point to bemoan the lack of a plan for the ST, which is true but incomplete. It’s not so much that they didn’t have an outline for the overall story as it is that they never decided what developments they needed to include—what key events and dangling promises they needed to address one way or another to make the ST not simply good but relevant to the trilogies we already had. To prove that the Saga needed, or would at least benefit from, a third trilogy.
On one level, it’s incredibly disappointing to see the landing botched so badly, especially when the problems would’ve been foreseeable from one look at the TROS script, and could have been largely avoided had these films been crafted with the proper mindset. For me personally, marathoning the Saga with the Sequels now means either I have to leave it visually incomplete after TLJ or end on a fundamentally unsatisfying note. An entire era of future storytelling is now tainted. And perhaps worst of all, our only chance at getting a proper VII—IX with the original cast was blown.
On another level, though, there’s still much to be thankful for. I still got hours of enjoyment and exhilaration, lots of new lore to sink my teeth into, new characters I loved, and I got to spend more time with some of my favorite characters in all of fiction, portrayed by their original actors. The ST provided a wealth of new raw material for editors to do awesome things with. Even the massive letdown of TROS inspired me to join a massive, rewarding writing challenge I never would’ve dreamed of if the official film had been acceptable to me.
And from a certain point of view — the one that’s probably the healthiest, which I should try to keep in mind more (even if I don’t always succeed) — the ST can be thought of as a fun “what-if” bonus that we didn’t need in the first place and spent much of our lives thinking we were never going to get anyway. There’s nothing forcing us to accept it as part of our personal canon. I was happy when the Skywalker Saga was just six films, and Disney’s efforts did not and will never take those six films away from me.