[quote=@IceHeart]


We have a resistance that cosplayed as rebels, we have a Republic that apparently only cares about money rather then running a galaxy, and somehow the Empire had some secret order that rose to Empire levels of power and construction despite not having access to the core worlds?  

[/quote]

The First Order's whole thing was that after the Battle of Jakku (the actual end of the war from the OT), some Imperial forces basically refused to admit defeat and fucked off to beyond the Outer Rim because of a secret contingency plan from Palpatine carried out by Gallius Rax, basically the acting Emperor at the end of the war, and then actually carried out to completion by Rae Sloane. And none of this is in the movies because it is relegated to books, comics, and even fucking Battlefront 2 (did you know Battlefront 2 is so canon that it literally explains the start of The Last Jedi?) and that is the real tragedy of the sequels, that so much of it is relegated to outside material. If the sequels weren't set so close to the end of the OT and TFA didn't [i]have[/i] to play it so safe that it might as well have just been hitting the reset button in The Matrix then maybe they could've done more to establish the stakes beyond "Oh it's the same [i]but not really[/i]." 

Ultimately the true success of the sequels is the characters. As long as you pretend Episode 9 didn't happen anyway.