Everything was going to go wrong for the OT characters anyway. There's no way it couldn't or else the story wouldn't have any tension. The only way to avoid them having crappy elderly lives would have been to jump the story forward far enough that they weren't involved.
The old EU ran into the same problem. The New Republic was established after Endor but rarely got a moment's peace with constant attacks from Imperial warlords and splinter factions (Zsinj, Ysard, Thrawn, Daala, the Crimson Empire, etc.), alien invasions (Nagai, Tof, Ssi-Ruuk, Yuuzhan Vong, etc.), Palpatine coming back to life, dark side splinter factions (Second Imperium, Empire Reborn, anything Lumiya was doing, etc.), culminating in the Vong killing trillions of people and the New Republic collapsing. So they set up the Galactic Alliance instead, which immediately becomes a dictatorship under Darth Caedus, who was Han and Leia's Jedi son who turned to the dark side and was killed by his sister Jaina (they also had another son, Anakin, who was killed in the Vong War), then the Senate got corrupted again when the Lost Tribe of the Sith stacked it and elected Abeloth. Then they finally got some peace, but two generations later the Galactic Alliance was defeated and the Jedi purged againin a war by the revived Empire and Sith, under the Fel dynasty and the One Sith ruled by Darth Krayt, until the Sith betrayed the Empire and went to war. The whole thing ended in an uneasy three-way government set up by Empress Marasiah Fel, the again-revived Jedi Order, and the resurrected Alliance.
At least it's more streamlined this time.
