I feel like Abrams completely ruined everything with the way he made Force Awakens. Zero originality and a carbon copy of New Hope -- that got the entire new trilogy off to a shit start. I agree that Last Jedi was the best out of the new trilogy; at least Johnson took some risks and tried to drive the story into newer territory.
Rise of Skywalker was terrible on every level -- over-saturated with way too many characters and a horrible plot. You can say what you will about Jar-Jar and Darth Maul, but resurrecting the Emperor was by far the dumbest thing that was ever done in any Star Wars movie.
I agree with you, but will focus on your "resurrecting the Emperor was by far the dumbest thing that was ever done in any Star Wars movie."
Well... a movie/story trilogy typically has a beginning/middle/end and you introduce and/or indicate the primary villain(s) in that first movie/story.
Force Awakens being a carbon copy of New Hope (I'd also it stole a bit from the entire original trilogy), meant they had to introduce a pair of villains ala Vader/Emperor, so they went Ren/Emperor Snoke.... but then decided to pivot to a new story path in Last Jedi by killing Snoke, and pushing Ren from villain to anti-hero.
Basically.... by the end of Last Jedi the story had eaten up the arc of the villains from the original trilogy, and hadn't done a whole lot to introduce or foreshadow another villain.
The only brane ded writing option was to bring back the Emperor and just kinda try to redo the confrontation at the end of Return of the Jedi, just with higher stakes... stakes btw they did nothing in the prior two movies to foreshadow or build up.
TL;DR: They started re-telling the exact same story as the original trilogy, and they probably should have just continued telling the same story with the same villains on the same timeline.
I always thought they should have began building a new and more dangerous outside threat, something like Sith-powered but mass produced by some kind of new super villain that is far more vicious and savage.
Perhaps a threat the old Sith have to cooperate with the new Jedi on in order to survive.
People enjoy the settings of Star Wars.... Wild West Space Opera..... light sabers.... good vs evil.... write a new story, keep it to 3-4 main characters with 3-5 recurring characters... people will lap it up.
The "Skywalker" Trilogy told almost zero new story.... but at least we got Babu Frik