You know what I've realized? As much as I like the trio in theory, I think they kind of hurt this movie in how they're used and written. Which is a bummer, because I was excited to see them interact.
TROS spends almost half of its runtime on Rey, Finn, and Poe going on their Wayfinder adventure, but most of that time is spent on action bits and jokes, and not any meaningful development of friendship between them as a group.
Rey never actually shares much about her struggles to her Resistance friends. She never tells them about her Force connections with Kylo; she never tells them she's a Palpatine; she never brings up her messy history with her parents to them. Any time she senses Kylo or has to deal with some problem, she wanders off on her own and tells Finn and Poe to stay behind. You'd think this would culminate in a moment where she realizes that she should rely on her friends and let them help her, and that the power of their friendship/the Resistance being together saves the day, but it doesn't.
In TLJ, the person Rey confides in the most is Kylo, about her loneliness and abandonment issues. In TROS, Leia (and not Finn or Poe) is the one she talks to about struggling to connect with the past Jedi, and supposedly feeling unworthy of Luke's lightsaber. Luke's the one she talks to in her lowest moment on Ahch-To. All the stuff about her parents and Palpatine lineage and brushes with the dark side (the entire meat of her arc in TROS) happens in her interactions with Kylo/Ben. Even in TFA, a movie where most of her screentime is with Finn, we never get to see Rey talk to Finn about her parents, or being stuck on Jakku, or anything. That stuff only comes up during the interrogation scene with Kylo, and with Han when he tries to hire her, and with Maz of all people. So in TROS, any interactions she has with Finn and Poe feel like fluff.
There is one moment I can remember where she tells Finn that Palps killed her parents and she had visions of herself on the Sith throne with Kylo, but she also tells him that she feels like "no one knows her" and she still doesn't share with him that she's a Palpatine (which is what's causing her whole dark side crisis). Even Luke got to talk to Leia about being related to and confronting Vader in ROTJ, but we don't get anything like that here.
And then Finn -- Finn tells Rey he was an ex-stormtrooper in TFA, but then that's never brought up again between them. He's hesitant throughout this movie to tell Rey and Poe that he's Force-sensitive, and when he finally DOES talk about it, it's with someone outside the trio (Jannah). Him being Force-sensitive could help him connect more with Rey about the dark side and whatnot, but it's so underbaked that its role in his story never amounts to more than "a feeling".
Poe deals with the pressure of being Leia's successor to lead the Resistance in TROS, and that follows through in a nice moment where he names Finn co-general. But he BARELY gets any interactions with Rey, and whenever they do interact, it's just bickering for bickering's sake, instead of any meaningful development of friendship.
And the movie, at least to me, does feel like it picks up in the second half, when the treasure hunt is over and each of the trio are able to do their own thing separately instead of forcing them together. Which says a lot.
So at the end when the three of them hug, it seems like it's meant to be a big, cathartic moment, but it just really falls flat. Imagine if that hour of Wayfinder-hunting had been spent instead on leading to Palpatine's return, and giving scenes more time to breathe, and building up Kylo's redemption more, and letting Rose in on the action.
And the ending message feels so muddied. Is the Resistance meant to be Rey's new "family"? If so, why does it feel like she's not even that close with them? She also takes the name Skywalker as her new "family", which could work in the sense that she connected a lot to Leia, Ben, Han, and Luke, but they're also all dead now, so...that's just depressing.
