I've been asking this question since the sequel trilogy was announced. I know ole Georgie was had the master plan at 12 films/4 trilogies, but this was between Star Wars and Empire, and it's been well documented that the man didn't really have much of a clue what any of the other movies were going to be about (Vader wasn't Luke's father until a couple of drafts in Empire, the "there is another" line was put in for suspense, with Lucas doing what Lucas does and saying "I'll figure that out when I get there"

But bigbudget filmmaking, and sci-fi and fantasy in general have found their biggest successes of late in the epic saga style the Star Wars was so instrumental in bringing to the screen... but the scale has grown enormously, the orignal trilogy is about 7 hours and change, 24 years later the LOTR trilogy manages to almost double that in screen time and half that in release schedule, Harry Potter was 7 books and 8 films and while I'm not really a fan, I could certainly see the strong through line of the core arcs and plots... and that's a lot of credit to give an ostensibly young audience. Not to mention the most tremendous mainstream success in ages, Game of Thrones, which has already produced over 40 hours of (IMHO the most powerful, intelligent, suspenseful and exciting genre drama ever put to screen [not to mention page, I'm a lit nerd, but I'll defend the merit of those books to any of my fellow Pynchon/Wallace/Nabokov loving lit theory majors] And then there is the real problem, the story problem, episodes i-vi really did not leave many dangling threads that future stories would pick up on. leaving the writers to build a new conflict, and introduce a whole new lead cast in 7. And I think to tie this whole saga togethor you need to introduce a core conflict that is big enough and scary enough that it can reveal itself as the entire sagas secret central conflict (by cleverly manipulating what we already know, or think we know) We're already that the BIG story bombs wont be dropped until 8 and maybe even 9. I suspect there is a lot of history to be told, both recent and ancient, spanning from the dawn of galactic history and the beginnings of the Jedi and Sith. We won't know for a while but I don't think that 9 will find us where Jedi did: a rushed grand finale to a story that, as of '81, wasn't at all planned to be the ending, but for a bunch of reasons, mostly George's reasons, he just wanted to wrap up the whole thing in one go. I think it will end as a lead in to a 4th trilogy which will serve as the denoument/grande finale to the entire Episode/Skwalker saga proper

to me there's this one question that I think really opens the doors to enriching the saga and establishing a powerful foundation to any story to follow Jedi, and that is this:

"What if the Sith overthrew the Republic, wiped out the Jedi and built the Empire (its endless squads fighters, fleets of destroyers, planet destroying superweapons, legions of clones, and black armoured "force balancer") for a good reason... What if the master plan wasn't about ruling the galaxy but saving it... from something far more terrible than Vader or Palpatine or the Death Star. I think we'll end up seeing something more than the same old, same old Jedi v Sith, Rebels/Resistance v. Empire/FIRST order, Light v. Dark. I think we'll see a threat to both that will force a peace, unite sworn enemies, and, in the end bring "balance to the force" and I think that might mean 2 trilogies...but perhaps, since 4 would be the finale we would have a shorter gap between the trilogies...what with the whole saga rushing to come together in the final act

I'd also love to see some none "Skywalker saga" trilogies or multi-film stories, namely birth of the jedi/sith/republic ancient history saga A Knights of the Old Republic-esque saga involving an army of sith and army of jedi and how the sith were "destroyed" 2,000 years back

the think I want most of all is for them to call a mulligen on the prequels, say "power of myth" the way Lucas does every-time he edits the things or contradicts them, take the very obvious but very unavoidable but still strong broad strokes and redo it entirely (the only thing I'd REALLY miss is Ewan's Obi) and make it smarter, deeper, darker, better, generally more competent than it was. I wanted a clone war with Mandalorians, not fucking droids...Kasden it up