Fadaar
That guy
It's too bad they waited so long to make the sequels because an episode 7 made in the late 80's with the original cast (and more importantly, SFX and directing crew) and an expansion of the Rebellion/New Republic characters (Wedge, Mon Mothma, etc) would have been great. Have it be focused on the complete removal of the Empire from power, namely big things like the Kuat shipyards, conquest of Coruscant, etc. Oh well. The whole nastiness of a prolonged war could have been what eventually drives Luke away from the Republic in the first place which leads to his attempt to kick start the Jedi order, which ultimately fails and creates Kylo Ren and his croneys. Combine that with a bit of a "cold war" between the Imperial remnants that the New Republic bureaucracy deemed unnecessary to remove entirely. This ties in to Lucas's whole fixation on WW2 (ie Germany rebuilding between WW1 and WW2) with the American angle of the Cold War. Blah blah blah eventually Snoke takes command of the Imperial remnant and begins to rebuild (aka First Order) while the New Republic either chooses to ignore them or just believes them to be beneath taking the time to address. Boom the storyline we currently have. A lot of the post-ep 6 stuff was covered in books and would be good to draw from, but we all know Disney hates the EU for the most part. Except Thrawn, at least they made him official and his character in Rebels is pretty awesome.