In all fairness to the cast and crew of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” there is no single ending that could please every one of the franchise’s many millions (and likely billions) of fans. Even with that in mind, however, it’s hard to call the ending the filmmakers ultimately chose anything but cheap.
For a great many fans, the ending of “The Rise of Skywalker” was the worst part of a trilogy that had already featured several objectionable sequences. But unlike the trilogy’s other alleged faults, which most often offended by ignoring characters and canon from days of “Star Wars” past, the finale committed an even worse, and even cheaper sin: It blatantly erased the overarching story of its own trilogy. There are too many offenses to list, but taken all together, it felt to many fans that the ending was simply a cheap, rushed choice to drum up nostalgia instead of suitably investing in the fates of new characters and concepts.
Naturally, “Star Wars” fans had plenty to say about the unsatisfying ending, exemplified in threads like “Rewatched The Rise of Skywalker. The ending makes absolutely no sense. This is how you end the saga?” by bulletproof5fdp, and one deleted user’s thread, titled “The ending of Rise of Skywalker literally killed Star Wars.”