Finally reserved the time to watch the final triad of episodes and, from the outset, The Ending of the End was fundamentally pretty awful stuff. While I was kind of touched by the entire ancillary cast conglomerating in the final scenes to defeat the villain trio, Twilight's composure only 8-9 episodes following her meme face-laden trivia breakdown was definitely challenging to buy as a result (telling us a character is grown is not equivalent to actually showing they have, but I guess the writers preferred to squeeze more drops of blood from the bag of cliched sitcom humor), several vital scenes fell surprisingly flat (even Starlight's battle with Chrysalis seemed desperate in a way (particularly considering her minor role in the remainder of the plot), as if the writers were scanning a checklist and inserting the bulk of its criteria onto the screen whether it benefited the story/made coherent sense or otherwise) and the entire experience (save for aspects of the climax) simply exuded a weirdly empty air to me, which I assume can be chalked up to the cliched nature of the plot and latter-day FiM's typical brand of obtrusive and overly basic comedy (digging the viewer in the ribs to laugh at a meme face simply because it's a wacky expression/weird is not really effective (or well thought-out) comedy, particularly when the earlier seasons actually offered a variety of well-structured jokes as opposed to dumb material - bizarre one-liners and obvious attempts at manufacturing fandom memes included -  which give the episode an air of a semi-self parody (or, more plausibly, Josh Haber and co. simply writing the script on autopilot).
The Last Problem was merely pleasantly forgettable. The plot was reasonable for a final episode, yet it (subjectively) simply wasn't successfully funny enough to work for me. It was also kind of insidious how the show's crew spent six years continually reassuring the fandom that Twilight wouldn't become immortal and outlive her friends before blatantly contradicting this in the final episode of the run. I sense it may be emblematic of the brony fandom and staff's relationship as a whole in a way.

With FiM concluded, I can only concur that it finished in a worse position than it started - from what I've gathered, the later episodes seem to be more popular with fans over on the major brony sites (primarily for having 'more meat and substance' and 'more introspective dialogue' than the earlier seasons, yet I would argue that the Faust-run seasons are far more consistent and well-written in that they actually commit to conveying (mostly) solid narratives with a unique personal touch and utilize dialogue/comedy in more effective ways (for some reason, the use of dialogue in the Haber-edited episodes (seasons 6 and end of 7 onwards) always felt overly expository/lazy to me, as if to create the illusion that something more complex was occurring on-screen than the reality) than their successors, which enables individual episodes to work better as an entire narrative as opposed to being 'the one where Rarity shreds with the guitar' or 'the one with Twilight pulling the uncanny 'pudding' face'.

Final season ranking: 2>1>4>3>5>7>8>9>6
Top 5 (decreasing order): Lesson Zero, Hurricane Fluttershy, The Best Night Ever, It's About Time, The Return of Harmony
Bottom 5 (decreasing order): Hard to Say Anything, What About Discord?, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?, 28 Pranks Later, Non-Compete Clause

This was... not a good experience.
During my recent hiatus from this place, I attempted to marathon the entirety of FiM chronologically and eventually came... to this episode, which essentially epitomizes every major issue with the later seasons; most notably the duller character interactions and multiple contrivances being pulled out to reach the obviously telegraphed climatic moral. The earlier seasons featured poorly-written and contrived episodes to an extent as well, but there was typically a sense that they were trying to accomplish something of value and many more episodes achieved higher highs by mining surprisingly subtlety and complexity out of simple, shopworn plots, whilst the seasons beyond 3 tend to overreach into 'intricacy' and instead deliver extremely simplified versions of conceptually complex plots where every point feels weirdly telegraphed to carry the narrative. It doesn't feel like the kind of priority that fits FiM's mechanics that well, personally, and the recent episodes where the crew lean into more comedic territory exude more an air of just throwing in some wacky faces (or obvious attempts to manufacture brony memes), references and scenes of characters loudly and awkwardly freaking out and calling it a day (remember when episodes featured jokes with more actual variety?). It also doesn't help that the comedy barely feels natural anymore, which is kind of detrimental to plots such as this - because most of FiM's jokes now stems from characters overreacting in an obvious and unrealistic manner, the more grounded aspects of the earlier comedic episodes have been shed in favor of a more artificial and emptily jokey air in a way that reminds me more of a awkward ripoff of a Friends-esque sitcom than FiM (notice how Pinkie was basically shoehorned into the role of the 'annoying airheaded friend' in a way that felt pretty similar to this?). I guess I just don't come to FiM to watch a bad sitcom, and this episode irked me as a result.