While The Rise of Skywalker was definitely a worse film, many Star Wars fans see The Last Jedi as the beginning of the end, a kind of harbinger of doom for the Disney era of this franchise. Fans mostly let the hate flow through themselves for this middle movie, and that keeps them from appreciating the ultimate irony. In short, The Last Jedi helped predict what Star Wars fans now say they want from the franchise: stories without any connection to legacy characters or major past events.

Keep Returning To The Same Characters

To understand this irony, all you have to do is spend a few minutes checking out various Star Wars subreddits, Facebook and Discord groups, and so on. The fandom is always eager to offer thoughts on what it would take to fix this franchise, with the general consensus being that Disney has fumbled this beloved universe in the worst possible way.

Even as vintage characters like Luke Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker, and even Darth Plagueis get shoehorned into modern stories, fans are adamant that they want genuinely original characters and stories (which is a large part of why The Mandalorian was such a breakaway success).

Kylo Ren Was Right

If you search your feelings or just go back and rewatch The Last Jedi, you’ll notice how this controversial film predicted what fans now say they want from Star Wars. Much of the predictions come from Kylo Ren, a character who famously encourages us to “let the past die…kill it if you have to.” When he tries to recruit Rey over to the Dark Side, he gets more specific, telling her how, “It’s time to let old things die…Snoke, Skywalker…The Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels…let it all die.”

Like Disney, Kylo Was Unable To Let Go

Now, even The Last Jedi’s biggest fans will admit that Kylo is a hypocrite…as soon as he kills Snoke and Rey rejects his offer, he decides to become the head Sith in charge and resumes what Snoke had already been doing: trying to wipe the Resistance off the face of the galaxy. In other words, he completely failed to practice what he preached. Nonetheless, what he preached is exactly what the Star Wars fandom now claims to want.

The Acolyte Embraced The Same Conflict

Ironically enough, it is the failure of The Last Jedi that arguably left fans with Star Wars stories that are just retreads of what came before. After the poor reception of this film, Disney began to play it safe, bringing back Palpatine for the next film, throwing Luke Skywalker into the Mandalorian, and giving us shows like The Acolyte which were about the Jedi and the Sith (or whatever Qimir wants to call himself) for the millionth time.

Fans understandably want something exciting and different, but The Last Jedi was the last Star Wars project to take creative risks, and the fans rejected that movie in its entirety.

Every Movie Feels Like A Nostalgia Trap

Disney learned all the wrong lessons from its failure, which is why every new Star Wars project feels like nothing but a cliche-ridden nostalgia filter over what we’ve seen before. Collectively, we rejected the movie that encouraged us to let the past die, and now the past–the “long time ago”–is all we’ll ever get from this once innovative franchise.