Old characters WILL be back, it's just a matter of when, and how different they'll be. There's a mysterious fleet admiral in Aftermath than many suspect is Thrawn. The new books from Force Friday bright back a ton of minor EU characters, ships, places, etc. If Thrawn comes back, he MIGHT be a Grand Admiral... There is a canonical Grand General, so a GA isn't a big step from that. He won't have targeted an Outbound Flight project for destruction unless they go back and create a new one... But he might still have an affinity for the arts, as the new fleet admiral does, with or without the specific study of the arts for a tactical advantage (which was always kinda silly... How would he perceive Earth thru our arts? There's such a wide variety... It only worked in the old EU because they stuck to WEG's interpretation of George's ideas, that every species is basically unified in everything; Rodians are all bounty hunters, Sullustans are all techy pilots, Gamorreans all thugs for hire). We'll get new backstory to any rebooted characters. No big deal.
Xizor and his pheromones? Sure, maybe as a teenager reading this story I would have wished to have some of that magic to work on Leia, but its embarrasing to even think about reading it almost twenty years later and its frankly surprising Lucasfilm even allowed its inclusion at the time. His character going toe-to-toe with Vader to win the Emperor's was never believable in my opinion. Luke displayed practically no development aside from building his lightsaber and he pratically reverts to his whiny ANH character instead of the more mature on-the-brink-of-becoming-a-Jedi we see in ROTJ. Dash Rendar was a poor replacement for Han... they should have just let Lando act as the Han transplant instead of introducing a new character. You think Dash really needed to "save" Luke? I think not. About the only part of the story that was worthwhile was Vader's characterization and his feelings towards Luke and how he tries to heal his wounds through the Force.
