Where do we go from here?

[godisawesome]

Even Dryden Vos had some Sith trappings (The glowing red blades, although not quite lightsabers). Naturally, considering who his boss was.

Yeah; having a villain carry the trappings of a Sith and engage in melee combat almost always upgrades them in the audience's eyes. Giving Pre Vizsla a lightsaber alone elevated him more than expected.

Here's an idea I had for a dark force user for Rey and Finn, just as an example of how I think you could make a "Sith-adjacent" villain without actually making them a Sith:

A "Force Supremacist" is raised among the Jensaari, here reimagined as pseudo-Jedi bodyguards to the Sith in ancient times (think "Sith Jensaari = Ottoman Jannissary") who've been marooned on a desolate planet for a millennia. The Jensaari were trained in Force usage, but intentionally sabotaged in their training and the strongest among them were culled when under Sith Rule, so that they could be effective bodyguards but not great threats to their Sith masters. They carried lightsabers and other Jedi and Sith weapons, but usually ones with low battery power, instead compensating with cortosis armor that can shut down lightsabers while still being vulnerable to them. In their marooning, they've emerged as near-divine leaders of the civilization, but are still hunted by left-over Sith beasts, like the Sith Leviathan, whenever they get too powerful. So this person is used to thinking of themselves as superior to those without the Force, and while a dark sider, it's because she had to learn to control and hide her growing power.

Let's call this person "Lumiya," simply for brevity's sake, and to reference one of her inspirations.

Lumiya's planet was rediscovered by Kylo Ren and the Knights of Ren in between TLJ and TROS. Kylo slew a couple of Jensaari, and considered enslaving them to his will, but Lumiya convinced him to leave them while she tries to convert them to the dark side without summoning a Leviathan herd. In exchange, she was given access to a Sith holocron on the planet.

When Palpatine dies, her holocron starts to die... but so do the Sith Leviathans. She now thinks her time has come to unite the Jensaari, and fulfil their "divine right" to rule the Galaxy. As such, she reshapes her armor into an Olympic ideal of power and beauty, while incorporating two old Sith weapons she's modified to fit her suit and theme: a Sith Lanvaork (poisoned disk shooter that can be controlled by the Force), and a multi-strand Lightwhip that has solid strands and laser strands. she then gathers some Jensaari followers, and becomes the new dark side threat, but with a different ethos and method (since she wants public acknowledgement of her greatness, but doesn't mind having followers who seem to be lightsiders.)

...Yes, that's basically an OC write-up, but that's the kind of "Sith successors" that I think LFL could create if they wanted.

[Ascended]

That sort of thing is what I hope to see, whenever we get around to the post-sequel landscape.

There is always going to be a group called Jedi; the name is too iconic to abandon, and those people are always going to have an opposite number to face. And a lot of the visuals; the lightsabers, the dueling, the black Darksider armor and white trooper armor, that stuff is too encoded into the franchise, too big a marketing powerhouse, to abandon too.

But that doesn't mean that the new Jedi have to be just like the old Jedi, nor that their foes have to be Sith. Stormtroopers were just soldiers, but visually close to the clone troopers, and whatever comes next should and certainly will follow similar aesthetics, even if the next group is wildly different from what came before.

If the franchise does indeed roll with the idea that the old Jedi and Sith Orders are truly extinct, which I think they should, that still leaves a lot of room for old trappings within the new things. And we do indeed have a lot of smaller groups like the Witches who could be upgraded, adapted, and evolved into major parts of the story.

[superduperman]

If I'm not allowed to retcon the sequels then I would just move away from the whole Skywalker family and original movies altogether. A New Republic officer is assigned to the outer rim to "tame" some of the more unruly star systems. And, no, they wouldn't be assigned to some desert world. I would most likely do a plains style planet. Most of these worlds are run by gangsters and warring factions fighting for territory and resources. The Empire left a lot of weapons and equipment behind now being used by these warring factions.