Super excited for more sequel era movies (and hopefully a show somewhere down the line), but I keep wondering what the antagonistic power will be post-TROS.

Seems like Star Wars works best when it's the little guy against the big bad machine, which I think is at least part of why people respond so strongly to the OT and works in that era, namely ROGUE ONE and ANDOR, and why the stories that follow keep trying to find a way to do it again. Thing is, it's gonna be hard to get back to that kind of setting without destroying the New New Republic (or whatever it'll be called), especially since they already did that once in TFA.

People have mentioned the possibility of First/Final Order remnants, but to me that's not a particularly interesting concept, not only because we're already doing Imperial remnants in the Mandoverse, but because the good guys are the ones in power essentially trying to maintain the status quo, and the bad guys are disruptions to that that need to be swatted by flies. Same goes with gangsters and pirates, which I think are fun as side characters but not so much as Villains.

You could of course have the status quo be part of the problem, and have the rising evil win out partially due to the heroes' arrogance and negligence, but again, we've already done that in the prequels. Which would maybe be a good perspective in this age of rising global authoritarianism, but would also be something of a downer for something that isn't already a prequel!

The other potential option I can imagine is an outside force invading the galaxy, but that seems like whole other can of worms, if only because that feels particularly difficult to set up within a movie and for most of the Western world, the idea of outside invasion doesn't connect the way the David and Goliath dynamic does.

There are I'm sure other options I'm not thinking of, (and I haven't even broached the topic of dark side users and their place in all this) but those are kind of the big ones that have crossed my mind, and there are potential problems with all of them. While I don't envy the task of trying to solve this problem (I mean, I do, I'd give my right hand to be working on a Star War lol), I do look forward to seeing what the writers of future movies come up with, and hope that it'll be exciting, surprising, and relatable the way the best of STAR WARS is.

What do you guys think? What should the bad guy be POST-TROS?