In general, I like how the old EU handled the fall of the Empire. It wasn’t a clean or quick process of collapse. It was a gradual decline like the Roman Empire into a sort of Byzantine rump state, with brief periods of resurgence. In this analogy, I guess Thrawn would be Emperor Justinian trying to reconquer the Western Empire.
The whole thing played out in a more realistic way and felt truer to real history, with the fracturing into warlord states and splinter factions rising up. I like that the Galactic Civil War continued for another 15 years after Endor, and I find the idea of a post-Palpatine declining Empire to be a really interesting concept.