Which makes little sense since Alola’s location is stationary and he doesn’t have to rush through those trials for any reason. He can challenge and learn about them on his own terms when he’s good and ready and can help his friends along the way (hence almost no “COTD has a problem filler #432”.) I just chalk it up to some not caring for Sun&Moon’s formula in that regard but I vastly prefer this over pointless forest treks any day. There’s no reason to be spending 40+ episodes on generic retread episodes when you have a ton of content and characters you could be using it on. Plus there were only four grand trials and they still had to create/use some to facilitate other characters’ development.
Except Alola could have easily been expanded to be made with bigger islands, even adding more islands in-between, removing the crappy school life shackles, etc. You know, like how the previous regions shoehorn a lot of new places to stall for time getting from one major city to the next.
It's just that completely destroying Lusamine's character was what ended up changing everything, since her plot is the backbone of the games. Because of her being made into an embarrassing parent who never had Cosmog before but still endured losing Mohn, Team Skull is much more pathetic than before, Lillie doesn't have to run to hide and thus not leading Ash around trying to learn more about Nebby in every island, Gladion doesn't have to pretend working for Team Skull to keep her safe but instead is just a drifter who isn't running away from her mom for taking chimera Arceus with him, Trial Captains don't exist because they needed to be gone just to migrate everyone (except Kiawe just because Melemele doesn't have a volcano) to Melemele's school where we don't even know if there is another teacher besides Kukui, Kukui not even having a single starter to hand out (seriously, he's the only regional professor who doesn't give starters) possibly stopped Ash from meeting Hau much earlier instead of screwing the poor kid with little spotlight, Hapu never travels to other islands to aid Lillie which only ended up making Hapu into a brat with tsundere streaks who yearned for friends...
And Ash stole Lillie's pad and Nebby from her.
Which all led to Ash twerking to train Rockruff/Sunny D-roc...and it worked.
TL: DR: Lusamine not going crazy after losing Mohn screwed Ash from taking things seriously and screwed everyone else...which is disturbingly ironic since things were right when she was crazy.