The go to illusion when we think of illusions is the mirage, you can see as water complete with the wavy nature of water and if you had no way of getting closer to inspect it, it might as well be the real thing. Depending on your philosophical take either it is always an illusion, or it becomes an illusion when you find out that it is not water.
A note of agreement with what seems like your main query, we might as well drop the word illusion when it comes to the physical description of the universe. Any framework of description is full of illusions that may never be proven otherwise.
I took QFT some years back and it also went over my head. There is still that mental gap of where the only way you can think about time is via time-(in)dependent wave function.
We experience gravity as a force - we can measure it with devices designed to measure forces. It's not an illusion. However, the model of gravity as a force between massive objects does not capture certain aspects of gravity - it's an incomplete model.
That doesn't actually mean that gravity is "really a geometric manifestation due to the curvature of space-time". Gravity appears to behave that way, but what do you mean by "really" in that sentence? What we can say with confidence is that the spacetime curvature model is a more precise and complete model of gravity than the mass/force model.
Perhaps if we figure out how to unify quantum phenomena with gravitation, we'll find a different model for gravity in that context. Will you then say that gravity wasn't "really" spacetime curvature? That wouldn't make sense, because all that will have changed is that we would have another model for interpreting and understanding gravity.
When people say gravity is an "illusion" or that forces are "fictitious", what they're really getting at is that these observed phenomena are not fundamental - that they're consequences of some underlying phenomena. But they're real consequences, not illusory or fictitious.
(Of course "fictitious" is a technical term used in physics, but it doesn't mean "does not exist in reality" but rather means something more like "is not fundamental".)
Total bullshit. The wave function is time dependent.
However, you do not need start with a time dependent wave function to justify the time-independent wave function.
So I don't think "golden ages" are going away any time soon.
This isn't to say that all progress is done in goldrushes, but the most basic and, therefore, best-known work of a given field will be done in that period.
There's no continuum because some things are harder, others are easy.
Computers have evolved pretty much "continually" since the personal computer era, but they took some time to be invented.
Quantum mechanics evolved "quickly" once we found out there was such a thing as quantum mechanics, up until them it was a lot of "banging heads" and freewheeling.
Not to mention delays because of other constraints: wars, political instabilities, etc