Can someone help me out and understand the timeline between the end of 7 and how it goes into 8...like how long Finn was out? How long did Rey train? How long was Finn and Rose s trip?
I think Episode 8 was a few days after the events of Episode 7. Finn and Rose's trip took about 18 hours.
My impression was that the rest of the timeline played a bit of catch-up to Rey. Probably no more than a couple months had passed since the Battle of Starkiller Base (or whatever you want to use as a marker from TFA) to the end of TLJ though.
The entirety of the events of both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi occur in 34 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin).
I got the sense that it took a few days to a few weeks for the First Order to marshal their various ships for an attack on the Resistance base. The days, or probably weeks, gives Finn time to wake from his coma, Rey to travel to Achtoo and for the Resistance to abandon their base. From that point it seems at most to be a a few days that the Resistance fleet jumps to hyperspace, realize they're being tracked, then make the sublight journey to Krait. Holdo keeps mentioning only X number of hours of fuel remaining, so the sublight chase wasn't very long. It's at this point that Rey returns with Chewie. I'm going to say a month max between the end of TFA and TLJ.
The Luke and Rey scene actually picks up a few seconds before the last movie even ended. Depending on how fast Rey traveled to Luke, the base evacuation may have even started before that. The order of events presented in this film would even seem to support this. By my scientific calculations and deductive reasoning, I come up with a time frame of somewhere between who knows and who cares.
The Luke and Rey scene picks up a few seconds before the end of TFA. We see Rey walk up to him again. This scene could be several days before the Evacuation. The key data-point we are missing is when in the narrative Rey and Kylo have their first force meeting. That's when Rey's story gets back in sync with the rest of the movie.
We don't see her walk up to him in TFA though. She stands far away with her arm extended. Doesn't TLJ have her walking towards him, which would be after she has finally lowered her arm? (Real question, I'm not 100% on how much they showed.)
No, I mean the end of her walking up the mountain stopping and extending her arm. I've only seen TLJ once but I'm pretty sure we see the last couple steps and the arm extend again (which doesn't last nearly as long this time).
Without a central government or military, Republic worlds would be easy pickings for a small, mobile force that's positioned to take advantage of the chaos. Whether the First Order could actually hold these planets is another matter, but they could claim a considerable amount of territory in the former Republic before anyone was able to get it together enough to stop them.
The entire Republic Fleet was apparently in the Hosnian system, so yeah, the New Republic is basically finished. With no Republic Fleet and the Resistance now consisting solely of the Millennium Falcon, the First Order has no opposition. They can easily lay siege to the remainder of the Republic at their leisure.
The Force Awakens ending didn’t flow over very well to The Last Jedi 2 examples; Hux suddenly went from a conversation with Snoke (hologram) who told him to bring Kylo to him to continue his training, to the Bridge of a Star Destroyer chasing the Rebels. Finn recovered within minutes/hours.
Does anybody remember where in the film Rey and Kylo have their first force conversation? The way I see it, the super short hyperspace jump we see at the end of TFA is dramatic license. Rey travels for an indeterminate amount of time to get to Ach-to. The resistance finds out their location has been discovered and begins to evacuate an unknown amount of time after Rey leaves. I'm also not sure it's clear how long they have been traveling when the 18 hour limit is brought up. Rey's story on Ach-to can take place anywhere in the timeline until she and Kylo talk and the narratives sync up.
There is time between the end of Starkiller Base and when Rey leaves to look for Luke. That was the last time we saw Leia, just before they start the evacuation of their base. C-3PO had gotten a golden arm again instead of the red one he'd been sporting the whole movie. We then had a trip through hyperspace as Chewie follows the map to Luke Skywalker. We end with Rey offering the lightsaber to Luke. Come The Last Jedi, we start out with the last of the Resistance personal leaving their base as the First Order arrives. There is a battle, the Resistance jumps away, Finn wakes up, and Rey is again seen delivering the lightsaber to Luke.