It’s a plot faucet. From an old discussion elsewhere:
Spreading 9 across two movies could not have helped. Sudden introduction was not the problem with a rehash of ROTJ and AOTC - quadrupling down on the Death Star lasers while also pulling a secret army out of thin air. Multiple fake-out deaths would be so much worse if they kept happening in two films. Giving people time to think about the macguffin chase could only make it sillier. They need a map in a thing from a guy who’s dead but has a knife matching ruins so it’s a map to the thing and they don’t even get it. But somehow they manage to fly through a rehash of the clouds from Solo, to where a zillion ships rely on one radio tower, and their brilliant plan for a wild-west shootout atop a spaceship - with horses! - completely fails until two zillion ships fly in to help. They just fly in. Through the secret cloud maze. Which is so un-navigable that it’s the only thing keeping the bad guys in, because spaceships can’t look up.