Nolan Fans

And so did Abrams, apparently. What was the point of them, ultimately? They were like the Boba Fett of this franchise. They serve no purpose other than to just be named, be a disposable plot device, and get killed at the end.

The fight with Ben is cool, but Ben is the cool one. I understand if there's more to the Knights in the extended universe, but everything we ought to know and like about them should have been shown in the films. Such a cocktease throughout the trilogy.

one final threshold of Kylo Ren becoming Ben Solo. The movie just bungles this completely, of course.

The KOR should've been the ones trailing the gang on Pasaana, should've had an entanglement with them on Kijimi, and Ben should've had an actual action sequence with them on Exogul instead of dispatching them in a split second. But yes, in theory, they represent an important element for Ben's arc.

We already had the second aspect re-imagined with at first Han/Ben, and later Rey/Ben, but in this Abrmas and Terrio also recreate the first aspect in Rey/Sheev, which results in her journey through this story to get even closer to Luke's.

So ultimately we end up with two storylines within the same saga, about two good natured lead characters strong with the force as well as being excellent pilots, who have been abandoned somehow on a desert planet without knowing who their real parents are, being drawn into the main show, by a message inside a cute droid who later becomes their close companion and their main pet basically (lol), only to realise later that they are from the bloodline of their enemy and have to fight with their own demons as well as defeating a fella named Sheev as the big bad in the end.

The way Abrams tries to differentiate between Rey and Luke are quite simplistic.

1. You see, her father wasn't a sith lord, her grandfather is.
2. She does make her own colour for laightasbre (in 1983 this seemed as sth unique to Luke), but it's not green, it's yellow this time. There, she is unique now.
3. She does see the evil version of herself in a vision, but this time she also interacts with it.
4. This time Ren doesn't kill Sheev, Rey does, and Ren only saves her after.

And the film ends with her looking at the sun(s) in the horizon which is an element unique to Luke, instead of something that you can attribute only to her. She becomes Luke's heir. Luke II if you will, instead of Rey I.