Dude, whataboutism ain’t gonna help your case. AOTC was a fluke because of the Spider-Man movie coming out at the same time, and the OT fit the same box office pattern that the sequels did. TROS made 1 billion dollars at the box office, that’s pretty damn good to me.
Comparing box office totals as a judge of audience interest isn’t whataboutism, it actually has a fair amount of bearing on the argument. And the OT doesn’t really fit the sequel box office pattern domestically, since TROS made less than TLJ domestically while ROTJ made more than ESB with the same metric. Comparing worldwide gross and the pattern isn’t really there however. The takeaway from that seems to be that 4, 5, 1, and 7 all did extremely well compared to their sequels, telling me that the only trilogy starter that wasn’t a disappointment was the original. TFA and TPM both depressed turnout for their sequels. Only TLJ seems to have unequivocally depressed the turnout of the final installment, since the domestic numbers for ROTJ were actually better than ESB and there are as you said extenuating circumstances in the case of AOTC.
Finally, every saga movie made over a billion dollars worldwide, accounting for inflation. The shocking thing is that TROS only barely made it.