What I wish we’d seen:

• Kylo goes full on Dark Side, but has no mentor, so he parallels the journey of Luke and seeks out the first Sith temple based on stuff he found in Snoke’s belongings
  • When he arrives, he discovers that Snoke had somehow resurrected Palpatine, and was drawing power away from him using torture
    • Thus, Palpatine could exist, and serve as the big baddie without being in control of everything
    • Palpatine as an actual victim would be interesting
    • No comically gigantic fleet of Death Star Destroyers. The threat is the Dark Side itself
• Rey gets trained by Ghost Luke and Ghost Yoda and collectively they question the ways of the Jedi
  • Why are they anti-love?
  • Isn’t the Dark Side important?
    • After all, Luke defeats Vader using the Dark Side (anger), but isn’t overcome by it
    • Rey’s meditation on the island
      • Warm vs Cold
      • Life, Death, Rebirth
      • More like Yin/Yang than Good/Evil
  • Turns out, the Good isn’t Light or Dark, it’s Balance
• Rey goes to talk to Maz who tells her to seek out Bendu
  • He teaches her about the origins of Sith and Jedi and encourages her to start a new order of Grey Force users
  • The Force connection between Rey and Kylo works just like it did in the movie (which was neat)
    • Using it, Rey and Kylo teach each other, and discover the deeper nature of the Force
    • They beat Palpatine, get married, and lead the New Order together as a balanced pair

Things I would have kept, but done differently:

• Rey kills Chewie
  • The ship crashes, she runs in to get him, he dies in her arms
  • Real consequences for not understanding how the Force works
• C3P0 has to have his memory wiped
  • But doesn’t have it restored because that completely invalidates his sacrifice
  • Deal with the fact that the droids are slaves and this is an ethical issue
• General Hux turns on Kylo
  • For similarly selfish motives
  • But then he doesn’t immediately die and get replaced with yet another soulless Imperial type
• Lando
  • Show him using his charm and wit to recruit the new fleet

Things I liked, but didn’t get developed at all, and should have been given substantially more time or cut:

• Basically all the new characters
  • Zorii Bliss
  • Jannah, the ex-storm trooper, and her fellow deserters