Luke Skywalker was a jaded recluse, Leia was revealed to have Force Abilities, Supreme Leader Snoke was unceremoniously killed off, and Kylo Ren revealed that Rey’s parents were nobodies who dumped her on Jakku.
The stakes were high for The Last Jedi, after J.J. Abrams did a ton of set up in the Force Awakens that needed to be resolved.
Fans couldn’t have predicted all these plot twists, and some purists had issues with the liberal changes made to the official canon.
Rian Johnson purposefully went against popular fan theories, challenging what the franchise was capable of.