What do you think episode 8 should do, to make this into a strong trilogy?

Yeah, who really DOES know...I myself am not totally expecting it but, the way Luke seems to be portrayed with this new trilogy so far, I'd think (if it was true) Luke tried to train Ben to help him get his son back
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I think something to consider with Ep8 and 9 is that Lucasfilm/Disney will probably want to make a episode 10/11/12 one day with some of the cast returning. and one of the worst bits in TFA was the crew trying to explain how the galaxy went from happy ending in ROTJ back to the dumps in TFA. I found the first order and snoke to be rubbish hollow threats. so I actually don't want a happy ending in 9.

I think -

EPISODE 8

Rey trains, but out of anger at Kylo Ren. I don't see another major motivation for her to train other than her personal feelings about Han/Her friends and their peril. she doesn't know about jedi or sith codes so she's not driven to join the jedi. Even Luke had more of a reason to be 'good' as he wanted to become a jedi like his father(I always assumed that was a motivation of his anyway).

Luke really should do something...I would be happy with him returning to the Resistance base to talk with leia and have all the resistance folks stunned in awe of the jedi's return. I think its important to note that yoda's 'wars not make one great' might work better for luke than if he did some made lightsaber weilding force power bonanza that fans want. I think him playing the gandalf role of moving players and offering a helping hand when nessisary would be more in keeping with 'the balance of the force' than him being some kind of magic sword weilding juggernaught. A breif scene of him dispatching storm troopers (ala vader in rogue one) would be much appreciated though.

Kylo Ren, despite killing his own father, needs to re-establish himself as a legitamate threat. him losing to Rey made him the underdog in my eyes, and people root for the underdog. He needs to show us why the galaxy fears him and why he got the name jedi killer. he really has to beat either Rey/Luke or Snoke in combat as they are the only other force users, if he can't do that then he wont function as the main antagoist.
If this is the case then he needs to lose to Luke and be brought to the rebel base to talk with his mother. in which case he can take on a more grey jedi/broken man role and they can use his knollege of the first order to topple snoke and all the evil. (I suppos ehe'd essentailly be fullfilling a gollum role, as an evil doer who could help defeat a worse evil) perhaps he'd find a kind of redemption along the way, or perhaps not.

Finn needs to step up his game in this, i'd like his eyes to be our eyes and show us the war from the ground (ala rogue one) I also think he needs to prove he is a hero as well as a good man as he just isn't grown into the role of co lead at the moment.

I'd also like it a lot slower, with more tension and expostion around the characters struggles. and less formulaic. I love the ending of ESB and having something like that would be fine by me, so it feels more like a chapter in a book and less like a complete stand alone story.

 

In the original trilogy, the last film was Return of the Jedi, which to me meant the rebirth of the jedi and the order, then fast forward 30ish years to Episode 7, we only get one jedi...Luke, yah i know Kylo and the Knights of Ren wiped out Lukes students( but ALL of them?), but in 30 years, theirs no one other force sensitives around? It pretty much brings us back to the status of the original trilogy of having just one or two force weilders, to me is telling the same story again in the future. So hoping we have more jedi coming out of the woodwork at some point in ep8 and ep9 so this doesn't become a carbon copy of the original trilogy.