"Gintama is ending" has been going on since the beginning of 2016
And gorilla is doing a good, thorough job with Gintama's ending, balancing both the action, comedy and drama as best as he can, covering and doing justice to most of the various characters he has introduced over these long fourteen years. Sure, nothing is flawless, there might be all kinds of issues, and it's normal that people keep criticizing and never shut up how their tastes aren't being pandered to enough but the comedy and action centered parts of the audience have always been vocal about their preferences. Gorilla is trying to stay true to all of his readers, and not to forget or overlook any of them. Unlike certain other long series which have ended in this magazine in the recent years, reading Gintama you can still feel how the author cares for his work and readers.
Next chapter seems to be focused on Madao, a character whose introduction in this manga was in a form of fall from grace and all his follwing developments happened while in a never ending free fall of despair. If even he happens to receive some sort of pay-off and redemption, we will know that the point of no return has been reached.