Good point but even though the quality of previous seasons have varied I would ask if the director and producer has disappointed their audience thus far? And it is HBO. They pushed last season back a few months for quality purposes to an atypical July release that ran to the end of August 2017.
Now their quality control argument is stretching things to nearly 24 months afterwards. They are rising their audience's expectations--possibly to unreachable heights. Practical viewers will congratulate their final product but they are also really setting themselves up for typical undue criticism in my opinion.