There's always something to debate within the Star Wars fandom. One of the more recent points of discussion - and one that seems to be evergreen despite the fact that the trilogy ended in 2019 - is the merits of the sequel trilogy. Every movie in the series received mixed reviews from fans and critics, with the final film (The Rise of Skywalker) being the least well-received of the three. The fact that the production of these movies was passed around to different hands in terms of writing and direction with no clear plan from the start is evident, and it caused opinions on all of the sequel movies to be incredibly divided.
All of the controversies have called into question whether or not the sequel trilogy was really worth it in the end. Would it have been better for them to never have been made at all and had no new Star Wars content? Were the new stories, as jumbled as they were, worth the price of constant fan wars and an incredibly dissatisfying ending (for a lot of fans) to a beloved series of movies? The answer to this question is going to be different for everybody, of course, but there's something to be said for the value of the sequel trilogy and the fact that despite their many flaws, they were still able to introduce audiences to new characters and interesting ideas.
The sequels may have caused a lot of fights amongst Star Wars fans, but it's not like that was a new thing. Before the sequels, the fandom would just fight about other things, for instance, the quality of the prequel movies. Now, it seems like those specific films are getting a renaissance where everyone has decided that they are actually good and deserving of being part of the Star Wars canon. What's ironic about this is that fans spent years making fun of the movies and picking them apart, or arguing about why they're not as good as the original trilogy. No one is ignoring their flaws now, but they're much more accepting of those flaws. There's no reason this couldn't also happen to the sequels, like some sort of Star Wars hate-cycle.
One thing the sequels did was bring a little more diversity to the Star Wars world. The protagonist was female, and the rest of the characters that comprised her main group were people of color, which alone is more representation than most of the other Star Wars movies combined. There's something to be said for kids (or even adults) getting to see someone who looks like them onscreen in a big Star Wars movie. Star Wars has had interesting female characters like Leia or Padme in the past, but the sequels let a woman be the main driving force behind the story, which was new for the franchise.
Little girls will be able to look up to Rey as a role model and know that they could be Jedi too, which might seem like a bit of a cheesy sentiment to an adult, but means everything to a child. Kids can look up to characters like Finn or Poe or Rose (because yes, despite the massive and unnecessary amounts of vitriol directed towards her from the fandom, a lot of people happen to think she's really cool) in the same way that their parents looked up to Luke or Han or Obi-Wan. The sequels are telling Star Wars stories for a new generation, and kids and adults alike being able to see themselves in these characters is so exciting.
The characters themselves (for the most part) are interesting and compelling additions to the canon. Rey is a powerful protagonist, and it's easy to get invested in her journey. Poe is funny and charming, and Finn has a backstory that was an interesting thought experiment when it was introduced (and then subsequently dropped in the movies following The Force Awakens, which is a massive problem with the writing). Even Kylo Ren, despite his dramatics, is a compelling antagonist, and the way they wrote his and Rey's dynamic was something that hadn't been seen in a Star Wars movie before.
The push and pull between the light and the dark was one of the more interesting elements of the trilogy. Morality was a little more grey, and characters were a little more complicated. It's easy to tell that the first two sequel movies were made by people who love Star Wars and wanted to dive into things that the franchise hadn't considered before. The Last Jedi especially, despite its polarizing nature, was able to explore some interesting themes and ideas that were more complex than the writing of the previous Star Wars trilogies.
Is it irritating that the sequels caused Star Wars to just throw away all of the supplemental stories they had previously built up in the Extended Universe in favor of all new stories? Sure, it might be for some, especially those who were really attached to those stories. It is definitely strange that they had all of that story already written but decided to start from scratch, to mixed effects. However, those other stories can still exist in someone's mind and be just as real as the sequel trilogy. Those stories don't just disappear, and they can just be another part of the world in the fandom, like another universe within the multiverse. It would be nice to see Star Wars pull from that material, but the Extended Universe didn't exactly reach a lot of the general public, and so the sequel stories are just as real to casual viewers as the EU is to hardcore fans.
Part of the reason why the sequels are so divisive is that they question the world more, and don't play things as safe as past Star Wars movies did. There were a lot of story elements that didn't work for some people, but the fact that they were allowed to be put in at all is really interesting, and shows a commitment to distinguishing the sequels from their predecessors. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. But no Star Wars movie is. These movies define generations, and it's natural that anyone who was young at the time the sequels came out and was involved with the fandom at that time would fall in love with the trilogy, despite its flaws.
They made a lot of mistakes in the process of telling these stories that they can hopefully learn from in the future, but in the end, having the sequel movies was better than nothing at all. They still explored interesting themes like legacy and self-discovery (which are staples of any good Star Wars entry) and gave so many people the fun of getting to experience a new Star Wars movie in theatres and discuss it for long afterward. Some fans may not like them, but they mean a lot to others, and even introduced a lot of new people into the fandom. It wasn't supposed to be the Star Wars of the 70s and 80s, and it distinguished itself by being a story for the current moment.