oh my god YES! It also bothered me that, on paper, The Last Jedi was only a hop-skip from Return of the Jedi, but having it be the bookend title not only makes sense but gives it weight as a finale. Not to mention everything else you said makes sense too. Esp. the focus on Luke in TLJ.
Oh god, thinking about Return of the Jedi and titles only adds more to the confusion of ‘why was the sequel trilogy movie titles so damn backward?’
When you think on how Return of the Jedi was once originally pegged as Revenge of the Jedi but was changed because revenge isn’t the Jedi way, only for them to then go for Revenge of the Sith for the prequel trilogies ending instead because it was thematically fitting, it makes so much sense to end the sequel trilogy with The Last Jedi because you’ve also got the overarching theme of the titles relating to either a Jedi or Sith. It really wraps up the whole journey of ‘here’s the trilogy ending where the Sith rose and the Jedi fell, here’s the trilogy ending where the Jedi rose again through Luke and Anakin and the Sith fell, and here’s the final trilogy ending where both ends are finally balanced and only one remains’.
And even if Disney does expand further than the Skywalker saga by moving forward in the timeline - with familiar characters or new - it would be like the birth of a new era. Because you’ve completed the Skywalker arc, the family is gone and there’s no one left to carry on that legacy ... but Rey can still continue the legacy of the Jedi, and those that come after her can pass it on and so on. Sort of like how the Order is rebuilt after KOTOR 2 and the Jedi eventually come back. By doing that you’re also further supporting JJ Abrams’ idea of ‘history repeating itself as time passes and generations change’, because with Jedi teaching again and taking on students it would probably see another academy eventually built and so on.
It’s just further proof that there was no guideline to the sequel trilogy before moving ahead, no preplanning of the three stories altogether. Because these titles as good as tell a story themselves, and up until The Last Jedi they worked. But the last two movies are a bit like ‘? I guess?’ whereas flipping the titles is a bit more ‘okay yeah, that makes sense to what you want the audience to read’.
