Cameos in Final Battle
The final space battle in The Rise of Skywalker was truly epic. The hidden fleet of Death Star laser-equipped Star Destroyers of the Emperor’s was massive.
Lando and Chewie went to find help for the Resistance and just in the nick of time, a ragtag group of ships showed up to assist the good guys. This was a golden opportunity for J.J. Abrams to include a bunch of cameos of previous Star Wars characters and alien species, but he opted not to. There was one brief cameo of Wedge Antillies but that was it.
This could’ve been a great way to include minor characters from previous movies and TV shows.
The ships themselves were the cameos as we see everything from The Ghost to Droid Control Ships. It would’ve been very easy to zoom in on a few of the cockpits and get a shot of the pilots of these vessels. We could’ve seen the crew from the Colossus and Hera and her son in the Ghost.
There could’ve been loads of familiar aliens as well, like Gungans, Wookies, Kaminoans, Mon Calamari, and even Nemodians. Having just the one shot of Wedge seemed like a missed opportunity to tie all of the movies and other media together in the end.