To be fair, the original trilogy winged it just as much, including a very similar pattern of writer and director shifts with the original director coming back f

To be fair, the original trilogy winged it just as much, including a very similar pattern of writer and director shifts with the original director coming back for the third part as a last minute fill-in, and a lot of people at the time complained Empire Strikes Back to Ewoks was a tonal shift as bad or worse than people complain about Last Jedi and Return of the Jedi. Contrary to all of George's talk of a "grand plan", Star Wars was always an adventure serial where winging it was the plan. (Also, George's "grand plan" itself still cracks me up as a kid who guessed to much of it reading the weird novelization, especially since Ars Technica got him to admit to it. Have you heard about the Whills?)