Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
Well, in some sense, the Jedi are all that there is.

Star Wars is an aggressively, deliberately, generic franchise. ... (snip)
I think this is probably the best way I've seen it put, and would largely agree with you, except to say that at this point the Jedi are no longer a distinctive thing. The lightsaber has been endlessly copied or imitated both in fan-film and other original works; the Force is so embedded in pop culture as to be many people's joke answer when questioned about their religion; the idea of a monastic order of mystic knights is so common now as to be an expected part of many fantasy/sci-fi settings. Star Wars' over-reliance on Jedi stories was understandable and even worked pretty well for a long time, but focusing on them to the detriment of the rest of the setting has turned them into yet another generic fixture, with the side drawback of horribly mangling their own lore as so many different writers chime in on what Jedi even are or how they work. That's why Rogue One and shows like the Mandalorian and later Andor were so critically successful for a while, they proved you could absolutely focus on other parts of the setting ... IF you told a compelling and interesting story to go along with it. The over-reliance on Force-users have taken the magic out of magic, but seeing the life of a quasi-religious bounty hunter or exploring what life under the Empire is truly like for most sentients was largely untrod ground.

What I'm trying to say (and probably failing to get across as well) is that Star Wars absolutely was made to be generic, but if it's going to continue as a franchise it needs to fill in the world like those two shows did (I should say, like Mandalorian seasons 1 and most of 2 did), not just focus on Force-user stories and pre-existing characters. Jedi are no longer its one true distinctive thing, because Jedi have become too generic for it, especially in a pop culture already saturated with superheroes.