That concluding chapter
I remember reading somewhere that the Conclusion shouldn't mark the point where you have run out of energy. A recent examiner's report made the same sort of comment:
"My second major criticism is that chapter 8, 'Conclusions', is far too brief (3.25 pages) and restricted to summing up what has gone before to do full justice to all the hard work which the author has manifestly put into this thesis. In particular, he missed the opportunity to elaborate upon the broader implications of his project for future comparative research ... by returning to some of the central questions and approaches introduced in chapter 1."
The first and last chapters both operate at a higher level of abstraction than all those chapters in between; they are partners that together wrap the whole thesis into a cohesive whole and so in many ways they should reflect each other.