Kind of a weird question I know, but let me explain. I’m not talking about your themes or messages, but the general feeling someone looking into your world or imagining themselves in it might get about the situation, when the world is not in conflict. Basically, you know how when you watch a franchise like Star Trek, it has certain recurrent moods and feelings, like the tranquility of flying through space, the bittersweet isolation of being on a ship in deep space, where you are close to your crewmates but far from everything else you know, and the general professional but still sufficiently jovial atmosphere that they seem to go for? Or with Pokemon when it’s very adventure driven and based around meeting everyone you come across and making friends both with other humans and also with these magical creatures! I’m sure you can think of descriptions like these for your favourite franchises. We’ve all imagined ourselves in these worlds or imagined ourselves as characters in these worlds right? What were some of the vibes or feelings you imagined when you imagined your world? Or I guess another way of putting it is what would a slice of life exploration of your world be like?
Committing to changes in the world can be stressful when you’ve worked so hard to get the details to a point where you like the state of things. I think it’s less a writing challenge and more of an emotional challenge though, don’t you? Our worlds aren’t fragile, we’re just attached to the way things are meant to be. It’s normal to feel that way, and I’m sure some of your characters would, too. If something goes out of whack, how would they try to fix it?
The alternative is to commit to an episodic format of storytelling, which can be fun for shorter formats and just as rewarding. I think more TV media should try harder to resist serialization, as it tends to diminish the enjoyment of individual episodes and devalue the time you spend with the show (looking at you, modern Star Wars shows - no I do not want to sit there for two hours while you say “trust me, it gets good”. It probably will, but my time has value!).
Lots of words to say, trust your gut. Some stories just feel right being episodic. If your setting has a firm baseline that everything returns to, you can work with that.