Apparently there are canon novels that occur after Jedi and before The Force Awakens. It is a trilogy called Aftermath. Only one of them has been released so far, with the second coming this summer, and the third the summer after that. Anyone else aware of this? I know it doesn't help with defending the movie(s) of the new trilogy since they are separate and it's kind of silly to assume viewers will read these books for the information that presumably should be in the films, but I would be curious to learn if any holes are filled in with these novels, or if they walk down a different story line altogether.
I've heard about them, but I'm not particularly interested (wouldn't have been even if I had liked TFA). In my mind they're about as canon as The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Force Unleashed, and other supposedly "canon" material. It's cool if people enjoy that stuff, but for me if it's not in the movie it's basically fan fiction.
The First Order - If the Empire was defeated, how did The First Order seemingly become a drop-in replacement with all of the same technology and scale of forces within 10 years or so?
In Return of the Jedi the Rebel forces destroy the new Death Star and kill the Emperor and his second-in-command (Darth Vader). This would be like wiping Washington DC and New York off the map, killing the US President and Vice-President. Yes the head is dead, but the rest of the empire lives and functions. There would be a power struggle and someone would wrest control of the resources of the old empire and a new one would arise. The structural weaknesses that saw the demise of the Roman Empire would not be in play, so while there would be some splintering of the forces, it is easy to imagine that after 30 years one group would be powerful enough to bring control to a large part of the former empires resources.
Sure, I know that the empire wouldn't have been instantly dismantled, but the implications are clearly that defeating the Emperor will ultimately bring it down. Tarkin himself stated that the only thing keeping the individual planets in line was fear. Without the death star, the emperor, and Vader they have neither leadership or fear in their favor.
The opening crawl in TFA also states that The First Order came to power only after Luke disappeared, which seems to be a much more recent thing, so again I'm a bit confused about the timeline and how a consolidation of power came about, especially since they seem to be serving The Knights of Ren which are yet another element we don't know much about.