“…he noted that a number of story elements from both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were borrowed from Lucas’s story treatments based on The Art Of… books for both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Young mentioned that many of the plot points for the character of Kylo Ren were already decided by Lucas: that he would betray his uncle, kill many of his fellow students, and ultimately murder his own father. Likewise, Rey would ultimately convince Luke to get out of his depression and do something about the war. The key difference is that both of these events would have happened in the same Episode VII – whereas in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, they’re both late-movie plot points.”
“Later, Young got into an argument with an Expanded Universe fan who was unhappy with the direction of the new films. The EU fan argued that Star Wars Legends was closer to Lucas’s vision (it wasn’t), an Young responded by reiterating what was mentioned above, with other users chipping in to suggest that Lucas’s ideas weren’t completely scrapped so much as they were reworked by the people working on the new movies. Hidalgo added to the conversation by adding some of the code names for the other characters: Skyler and Kira (and Kira wasn’t the first proposed name either; she had at least two others) became, after a fashion, Finn and Rey. The Jedi Killer morphed from Talon corrupting the son to becoming the son. Uber became Snoke. The starting point shifted. Yadda yada yada. “The Son” and “The Jedi Killer”, of course, referring to the character that would become Kylo Ren. “Talon”, interestingly enough, refers to the Sith Lady that was seen in the Star Wars: Legacy comics (an idea that Lucas did pull over from the Expanded Universe, though not in the way that the character was originally meant to appear).“
“[…] Lastly, Hidalgo noted that “Skyler” (Finn) was originally The Son (Ben Solo) in some drafts of Episode VII: Skyler was the son in some versions. And as for how all that was gonna go down, that ain’t my story to tell.”
“[Young] noted that a number of story elements from both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were borrowed from Lucas’s story treatments based on The Art Of… books for both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
Young mentioned that many of the plot points for the character of Kylo Ren were already decided by Lucas: that he would betray his uncle, kill many of his fellow students, and ultimately murder his own father. Likewise, Rey would ultimately convince Luke to get out of his depression and do something about the war. The key difference is that both of these events would have happened in the same Episode VII – whereas in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, they’re both late-movie plot points. Hidalgo added to Young’s observations by noting that Kylo Ren’s origin was actually intended to be explored in Episode VII instead of Episode VIII:In a very general sense, the original idea of 7 started midway through what we now know as 8.