What happened to the sequel trilogy was such a shame. The Force Awakens pretty much followed the same plot structure as A New Hope, and it didn’t take many risks. Not very memorable, but it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the prequel trilogy movies, so it did its job at bringing the franchise back into the public conscious long enough to deliver the next two movies.

The Last Jedi did the exact opposite. It took a ton of risks and attempted to subvert expectations at every turn. I remember sitting in the theatre being blown away at everything this movie introduced. A lot of people hated the hyperspace kamikaze maneuver, but it was a great spectacle in the moment so long as you don’t think about the implications of such a maneuver in future or previous space combat. All it needed was a couple lines of exposition about why it was only possible in this specific scenario.

Some of the risks in The Last Jedi payed off, and a lot of them didn’t. It was hit or miss with most people, either you loved it or hated. Personally I thought it was a great movie, but not necessarily a great Star Wars movie. With some small adjustments in a few places, it could have been a lot better.

Then J.J Abrams came back and directed The Rise of Skywalker. This movie was hot garbage. It felt like J.J Abrams and Rian Johnson never so much as spoke to each other about plot and continuity. It felt like the trilogy was written one movie at a time by people who only read plot summaries of the previous movies. They noticed the bad reactions of the people who hated TLJ and basically retconned every complaint, going so far as writing Rose almost out of the story.

They were too afraid to make Kylo Ren a proper villain, realized Rian Johnson killed Snoke too soon, and ended up bringing Palpatine back on the fly in the dullest way possible.

Also, none of this movie made any sense at all. Palpatine happens to have a fleet of thousands of planet killing Star Destroyers? He has legions of Sith followers to do his bidding? Where the fuck were these guys when Vader threw him into the Death Star reactor? Have these guys always been available to him, even since the prequels? The implications of all this just screws up so much of the lore.

The sequel trilogy had so much potential, but Disney decided to write it by committee, and split the movies between two different directors who never so much as discussed any of the continuity between the films.

The Mandalorian is a great show, and so was The Clone Wars. I have no idea why they are capable of coming up with solid stories for their TV shows, but not their flagship films. Unfortunately these shows will now have to dance around the steaming pile of garbage established by the sequel trilogy. In the end, I suspect those movies will be soft retconned, hardly ever referenced again in future material.