Oh, there really really is. Leaving aside the massive gulf in the execution; Palpatine was the main antagonist of the first two trilogies. His death mattered. He was the living embodiment of the malignant evil that had infected the galaxy, a being even Darth Vader feared, and his defeat was the simultaneous symbolic culmination of both Anakin's entire personal character arc AND the larger struggle of the rebellion against totalitarian oppression.
Maul was a disposable henchman who only became an actual character *after* they un-killed him. Much like OT Boba Fett, he was mostly a cool design there to serve a plot requirement, and to be dispatched when his role was fulfilled. He had zero agency in TPM. Hell, even Jango and Grevious had way more going on than he did and they each only had three or four scenes each.
Oh and "they did X before" is not exactly an endorsement. Indeed it fairly well sums up everything wrong with tRoS & TFA: it's all re-heated leftovers. A lazy, unoriginal retread. Bringing Palpatine back means nothing to anyone, least of all Rey who had zero relationship to him, making that connection a hollow, pointless one at best.
Not at all. If this is *really* the direction they wanted to go, they had three movies to pull this off and instead they halfheartedly shoved it all into the third movie. "But it's not a TV show!" is hardly an excuse when you have 6 hours to play with and you spend a third of one movie farting around on a casino planet and half of another on a shallow and pointless McGuffin relay race.
