I got a rare opportunity to finish two progression fantasy series one after another recently. And it really hammered home how important an epilogue can be.
Mark of the fool, is a series many have a problem with, but I adore. And a good tenth of the book is the epilogue. Giving us a lot of time to wind down from a perfect climactic battle, and just enjoy time with these people as they set about their lives. A great ending focusing on the characters we love rather than some bad guy.
Compare this to Qi=MC^2. Granted it is nowhere near MOF in terms of quality. And it is a knock off of Beware of chicken(a god tier series). But I genuinely did enjoy it, and had potential to go down as a solid 6.5/10. But the ending was rushed, and we got a one page epilogue not really building anything up or closing things down. It was an epilogue coz stories have to have an epilogue and the author had to ham fist in the title of the series somehow. (Ps. The cool qi=mc² means nothing if you're wondering. Spoiler alert I guess)
And this isn't an isolated situation. Whether we are talking about traditional fantasy, progression fantasy, scifi, etc, I've consistently found that series that focus on a cathartic and significant epilogue to end on, are remembered well. I mean LOTR has like a whole ass arc after sauron.
So dear authors of this subreddit. Please do us all a favour. Write atleast a 4000 word epilogue. Especially since y'all are writing 300-1000 chapter books. No one is gonna complain because they spent more time with characters they love.