...it would have taken at least another 5 full seasons to get through everything and have it not feel rushed. With each season being increasingly difficult and expensive to shoot and CGI. With increasing risk of actors dying, being unavailable, demanding too much money to return, getting too old to play their part realistically, etc. With the writers room continuing to turn over.

This is the inherent downside of successful, long-term, serialized storytelling on television. The production realities make it almost impossible for the show to feel the same toward the end as it did during the beginning and middle. Television is not the ideal medium for unspooling a perfectly consistent, complex narrative over a period of longer than about 3 or 4 years. It can still be great after that, but it's going to be different by necessity.