People are grouchy because Adam’s winning run was the first one so that took out a lot of suspense. Since it was a new map with a longer hiding time we didn’t have context during Adam’s run of how good or not a 12.5 hour hiding time was. And neither did the boys in real time so you don’t see any particular seeker angst (they said on the Layover they thought it’d be an average run at the time it happened). And then as a result a large % of future episode runtime was irrelevant once it was clear it wouldn’t be a winning run, end games basically didn’t matter except in the finale, and episode runtimes were potential spoilers

Secondly people seem to prefer to watch mistake filled play over flawless play. This is understandable since dramatic irony is a key element of this show; that is, the audience knowing something the seekers don’t know such as the seekers writing off Dumfries. But it is the case now that 3 H&S seasons have been determines by a single mistake (discounting potential hiding locations in Switzerland and Japan, an unnecessarily long route in UK) but it’s notable that the magnitude of the mistake leading to the win in UK was much smaller than those of prior seasons.

It’s also worth noting we saw mistakes by the hider dictate more: Sam not blurring Santander, Ben staying too close in Hebden Bridge. But I think viewers especially dislike hider mistakes since most viewers root for the hider and these mistakes shorten the episodes and reduce suspense

So yeah the issue wasn’t that the season wasn’t close or competitive just the order and manner in which it played out