Emperor Palpatine took control of Coruscant in the Star Wars prequels and ruled over the Senate from there. However, by the time The Force Awakens rolled around, the New Republic-controlled Senate had, for some reason, moved to a newly created planet called Hosnian Prime.
We didn't get to spend much time there as it was destroyed by the First Order's Starkiller Base, but it seems the original plan was to lay waste to Coruscant in what would have been a truly shocking moment for fans. "Basically [Bad Robot] wanted it blown up," Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo shared in a now-deleted tweet. "[Lucasfilm] didn’t. Hosnian Prime was the unsatisfying middle ground. It happens."
"I should say 'some folks at' because it’s not like companies have points of view," he later clarified.
You can't really blame Lucasfilm for wanting to spare Coruscant because that is a planet with potential moving forward. We've yet to revisit the Jedi Temple, for example, though we do know Colin Trevorrow's Episode IX would have taken us there for an epic final stand against the First Order. Unfortunately, Abrams scrapped those plans and we got that CGI heavy aerial battle above Exegol instead.
Your guess is as good as ours when it comes to when we might head back to Coruscant, but the door being left open for another visit is no bad thing, even if it lessened the stakes in The Force Awakens.
Do you think Abrams was right to want to destroy the iconic planet from the Star Wars prequels?