Strictly speaking, only two of the three movies that have come out under Disney are actually Proper Episode films. Rogue One and the other “A Star Wars Story” films to come purposefully aren’t supposed to provide a sense of cohesion with the main story. They’re designed to be stand-alone one-offs that fill out the non-Everything-Is-Always-About-The-Skywalkers parts of the universe (and, cynically, to keep box office revenues high in between 2-year waits for Episode releases).
Looking only at Episodes 7 and 8, I think the new trilogy is setting up to follow the same broad-strokes structure as the original trilogy did. So far we’ve gotten a New Hope-style “Introduce everyone and score a decisive victory against the big bad”, followed by an Empire Strikes Back-style “big bad returns to curb-stomp the good guys”. If they follow this arc to the same conclusion, Episode IX will have the Resistance rebounding from their losses and putting a more decisive end to the bad guys. I can’t even begin to guess at the contours of how that rebound will happen, but that’s what has me most looking forward to the next Episode film.
Star Wars is in an interesting place right now, because while it’s always been a pretty open playground for storytelling in books and video games, we’ve never really gotten a similar diversity of “takes” on the material in cinematic form before. While the first trilogy could arguably be described as collaborative works with Lucas at the helm, 1 through 3 are pretty much 100% Lucas. Now, though, we have more writers and directors coming in to make their mark and show us what Star Wars means to them. The Force Awakens is basically JJ Abrams’ love letter to the original trilogy. Rogue One is a heist film full of misfit characters who each get their moment in the jerkwad sun. The Last Jedi is a more character-driven piece that seems to go out of its way sometimes to reflect on the franchise and examine the things that we’ve taken for granted for so long. Star Wars cinema is now a collaborative, diverse project, and I honestly think that’s really exciting. I’m sure they won’t all be gems, but I’ve been thoroughly pleased with the material that’s been produced so far.
I think subverting the “you’re actually an important person” trope is a much more interesting plot twist than re-hashing the surprise reveal for a third time in the same franchise (first Luke was related to the Big Bad, then Anakin was a magical Force-baby spoken of in prophecy). The fact that she doesn’t have any sort of powerful, important heritage makes her skill and strength with the Force all the more interesting to me, and it plays into the point the film is trying to make about not waiting around for pre-destined Heroes and Legends to do the big important things. The Force is, well, awakening, and everyone has a role to play.
If anything, I think The Force Awakens stumbled by setting up so many superfluous salacious hints at bigger mysteries while unceremoniously wrapping up arguably its most important mystery—where’s Luke?—in the last 5 minutes of the movie. Before R2 just woke up with the rest of the map, I was expecting JJ to be setting up Episode VIII to be about the actual journey to find Luke now that the mapguffin was secured. Instead, the movie wrapped up with an “oh, there he is” and knocked off to the pub end credits.