The sequel trilogy was made by two different people who had completely different visions of Star Wars and did not communicate. The first movie was total nostalgia bait and fun, with a little bit of thematic playing around with the politics of neo naziism. The second movie was a philosophical musing on the power and flaws of legends, capitalism, war, and ordinary people. The third movie undid every theme in the second movie so it could focus on nostalgia bait and fun, with nothing important to say except for a weird side plot about stepsibling incest.

The reason we don’t see any of the inciting incidents for anything that’s going on is that JJ Abrams wanted to copy George Lucas’ trick of doing a story that starts in media res and not explaining previous events until several decades later. Because Abrams was nostalgic for the original Star Wars movies. That’s it, that’s the entire reason. Abrams didn’t even bother writing down why Luke is in hiding from the war, he just wrote up until the point Rey reaches Ahch-To and put the pencil down. Then Rian Johnson had to figure out a compelling reason on his own without contradicting anything that had already been done, and he came up with the idea that Luke wants the Jedi to end. That’s why the movies are the way they are.