We really haven't had a casual season since lws3 huh? Like an arc made to lead *up to* a big bad, not start and address it entirely within one season.
Lws1: scarlet, as a villain but a precursor to an elder dragon
Lws2: took the info from lws1 and built slowly to the big extra reveal of mordremoth creating sylvari, built up big emotional stakes and gave us a lot of really interesting background information.
HoT: fought said elder dragon, messy season but had more space for what was rushed since the preamble happened in lws1
Lws3: minor enemies (white mantle, a mursaat) all to lead up to the reveal that balthazar was free and wanted to kill all the elder dragons. Minor jormag and primordus stuff too, to build Braham personal stakes and help us understand the necessity of the dragon cycle.
PoF: fought balthazar, with the stakes already there and able to dive right in. Found out at the end about kralk being fully active.
Lws4: fought both suddenly returned joko and kralkatorrik in one season, big stuff constantly happening.
Icebrood: found out about and fought two elder dragons at once, big stuff constantly happening.
EoD: found out about and fought aetherblades, the void, and soo won all in one season, big stuff constantly happening.
SotO: found out about kryptis and wizards and had to save two dimensions, big stuff constantly happening.
JaW: found out about the titans and are in the process of wiping them out while also finding out deep mursaat lore, big stuff constantly happening.
I kinda miss interstitial seasons you guys, time to process between the huge steps. They're chance for some really interesting lore expanding and also are the places where anet has gotten the most creative with mechanics and just testing things out.
After lws3 the later stuff pretty much would just wrap its own thing and be self contained. I miss the slow contemplation, getting individual character studies within the season instead of as side achievements. It'd just be nice to have a real living world season again