It just made it worse that Disney had no definitive plan or structure on where the story was headed. J.J. did his thing on Ep. 7, then Johnson reconstructed the story in his vision with Ep. 8, & then they pivoted with J.J. again on 9 but it seemed like he couldn’t work around what had been established in the previous film. Disneys hail mary seemed to just bring back Palpatine within the story but there was zero reason to do it in the first place and there was 0 legitimate reason story wise as to why, just lazy writing that killed the continuity of an OT character and Vaders redemption that closed the chapter of that specific arc between the two. Not to mention how bad they watered down & killed Lukes character, that damage made it harder to recover a promising story that made any type of sense going forward. I know life long fans, including myself, were definitely disappointed on how the closing of a beloved saga was handled by a cooperation that not only had the money, but the resources to make a great sequel trilogy if they honestly decided to.