I think the hatred for the last season is overblown. A ton of people used the criticism of how rushed and poorly thought out it was to jump on how it ended because they had their own preconceived notions about where everyone would end up and were angry when it went in another direction.
That said, with how abruptly it all got tied up I've completely lost interest in revisiting any of it or reading about it. The fact that it was a totally avoidable issue too is really what annoys me still, the show-runners seemingly just needed to hand it over to someone else and manage the transition, but instead we got the absolute bare minimum needed to finish it. Maybe it'll eventually come out that they just couldn't keep certain actors involved that long or something but for now it just looks like they couldn't be bothered any more.
Yeah, we'll all have had our own pet preferences for the ending, but that happens all the time with TV series & films and as long as the ending makes sense, sticks to the canon, ties up loose ends and sub-stories, and is played through logically, it's not a problem if it's not the ending you want.
This was just horseshit, though, and the more I go over it, the worse it gets.
So many convenient wrap-ups that made no sense in the context of the characterisation and story evolution that had gone before. So many other loose ends left dangling or sub-stories that turned out to be pointless dead-ends. Characters acting totally out of the character they'd built over several series. It was clunky, clumsy, rushed - and in a series where certain story elements meant you had to suspend belief to an extent, jarred you back into real life with a slap of incredulity.
It was like they brought in new show runners and writers for that last series who hadn't previously watched any of it, but skimmed through some plot synopses for each series and went "Righteo, let's get this bollocks wrapped up and done with"
