Anakin showing up in TROS, outside of the ways he already does, would have been bad l. It would have made TROS *actually* guilty of a lot of the things people who hate it and the st say it’s guilty of. It’s evidence of how narratively, a lot of sw fans trade sense for service.

Ben doesn’t have a relationship with Anakin. He doesn’t even really have one with Vader, he just *thinks* he does. His arc directly revolves around becoming what he thinks he is destined to become by literally severing ties with his family.

Replacing the Han/Ben scene with Anakin robs Ben of his arc, of the thing TFA explicitly tells us eats at him everyday. TLJ tells us this too. (Luke to Ben on Crait). Having Anakin show up is for us, not for him as a character. It’s his dad who he has a failed relationship with.

The big miss would have been to never follow up on answering if he had the strength to do what he knew he had to. That scene is one he’s played back in his head endlessly. We finally see the proper conclusion to it. And while we are on the subject...

...the same goes for interjecting Ani at the end; Ben doing that because gramps said so, again, robs him of his agency and his ability to make his own decisions. The ‘finish what you started’ parallel needs nuance, and TROS already lacks a lot of it.

So why people want to purposefully sabotage the one arc of the film that actually is nuanced, that doesn’t bang us over the head with ‘THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING, DO YOU GET IT?’ is 100% beyond me. It’s a tragic misread of the character and would be the worst form of fan service.