I think when I look back at the show as a whole, pacing was never it's strongest suit. Somethings felt rushed to the point of irrelevance(Dorne) and some things were dragged out for no real point(Arya learning the same lesson from the Hound week after week as they walked across the country).
Personally, I still feel like they established Danerys' slide into eventual megalomania pretty well. Were some aspects rushed? Sure, but again that was always true of the show. We got, like, three seasons of her in Slaver's Bay learning that ruling a country as a foreign presence was more complicated than just having dragons so it feels like that element of her decision making was pretty well established.
Previously, people forgave a lot of those pacing problems if it had exciting enough conclusions. The stuff with the High Sparrow didn't need to be a whole season long but, well, the explosion was pretty cool so all is forgiven. The endless time wasted on establishing that Ramsay Bolton, easily the show's worst character, was a mean guy absolutely could have been repurposed into more character time with the people we give a damn about...but then he lost a big battle and was eaten by dogs so whatever.
But again, it feels like a lot of that was about the need for the show to get certain characters to certain places at certain times while giving other characters something to do while the meat of the story was taking place elsewhere. Then, when things finally came together, they had a limited amount of time/energy to wrap things up. So some things felt rushed and maybe the biggest setpieces didn't have the heft they did before. I think it's fair if you feel that way but this show was never The Wire or The Sopranos or Mad Men in terms of character or pacing.
