I dunno, I think it's more accurate to say that it ended terribly in Episode 9 when Abrams returned, shrugged, and ignored everything that had happened in 8. The film where we were given the phrase "somehow Palpatine returned"... :D

All symptoms of staggering mismanagement by Disney, of course. A trilogy with a stupid planned plot arc would have been better than the sequence of "solid but uninspired Star Wars throwback" + "interesting and out there reinterpretation of the mythos" + "but what if RotJ again but dumber?"