9 Things Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Did Right
8. It Finally Made Snoke Interesting (And Palpatine's Presence Wasn't A Bad Thing)
Another common complaint has been that Rise retconned Last Jedi by revealing that Palpatine created Supreme Leader Snoke and was a puppet master controlling Snoke the whole time and this is another thing that has been blown out of proportion. Firstly, this isn't a retcon since Snoke wasn't given any backstory and there was nothing to retcon and secondly, this was actually a good reveal.
Not only does this finally make Snoke, who was a crap villain and one of the worst characters of the Sequel Trilogy, interesting through his links to Palpatine, but this is a great way of tying all three trilogies together by having Palpatine being a presence in all three. Yes, Palpatine's return clearly wasn't fully planned out but as JJ Abrams has said, Palpatine being entirely absent from the Sequel Trilogy probably would've felt a little off.
If the Sequel Trilogy had hinted at Palpatine's presence more or if Rise had, at the very least, explained how he survived (apparently an explanation was filmed but then cut out because... reasons), Palpatine's return and Snoke's origins would've made much more sense and there probably wouldn't have been as much criticism. Speaking of the Emperor...