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Why We Expect Connections in Star Wars [SPOILER FREE]

When I walked out of the theater for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, I didn't wonder who Rey's parents were.
Maybe I should have. After all, J.J. Abrams directed it, and he loves to include mystery in his movies and TV shows.
When I walked out of the theater for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, I didn't wonder who Snoke was.
Maybe I should have, but I assumed he was just a Big Bad behind the Big Bad. I didn't care whether he was a resurrected Palpatine, or an evil version of Yoda, or Darth Plagueis (which I just found out is spelled exactly the opposite of how I thought).
I didn't wonder whether Finn was the son of Lando Calrissian, or whether Poe was related to Boba Fett, or anything like that. I actually thought it was pretty cool that the villain was related to Han Solo!
Then I heard that people were wondering "Who are Rey's parents?" and "Who is Snoke?" and I thought "People are wondering this?"
Now people are saying that people shouldn't be disappointed in the new movies for having characters who aren't related to the old movies and who don't have backstories. After all, we didn't know the backstoreis of the characters in IV, V, and VI, and we were onboard with all of those. So why not treat Episodes VII, VIII, and IX like IV, V, and VI?
Because Star Wars has set an expectation for its audience that characters will be tied in to other characters.

 Ep IV: The droids who need to find Obi-wan are owned by someone who knows Obi-wan. And Obi-wan happens to know the beautiful princess.
Ep V: Darth Vader is the father of the random farmboy who happens to be the protagonist.
Ep VI: The beautiful princess the farmboy is rescuing happens to be the sister of the farmboy and happens to be the daughter of the villain.
Ep I: The droids who become important later were created by the future villain.
Ep II: The Chancellor happens to be the future Big Bad. Not to mention Jango Fett.
And then there's Rogue One - where half the movie is connections to future movies.
These aren't just convenient coincidences. These are connections between characters that we've come to expect after 5 or 6 movies. If there were any other franchise with 5 movies in a row that all had 
After all that, we kind of expect mysterious characters to be connected to the old characters.

 As a side-note, the reason I didn't wonder who Rey's parents were was because Rey acted towards Han and Leia as she would towards her parents, so I felt like there was emotional closure to the question of who Rey's parents were. I'm not the kind of person who has some fan theory that Rey is a Solo. I just assumed she was a Solo and didn't question who her parents were past there.
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