What about stories where the hero gets what they wanted, it's a net good for everyone, and the only heavy price is a newfound responsibility to maintain this good rather than "returning to a familiar situation"? To me, that's an actual hero.
“For some characters, [7. Return] is as easy as hugging the scarecrow goodbye and waking up. […] or in a love story, having realized what’s important.”
Based off your description, I’m imagining a heartwarming and simple story about a scientist who wants to find a cure for cancer:
1. ESTABLISH A PROTAGONIST: We meet her in college.
2. SOMETHING AIN'T QUITE RIGHT: We learn that her brother has cancer, and that she wants to cure it.
3. CROSSING THE THRESHOLD: She gets hired at a prestigious cancer research lab.
4. THE ROAD OF TRIALS: Night after night, she stays up late pouring over data.
5. MEETING WITH THE GODDESS: She finally discovers a cure for cancer.
6. MEET YOUR MAKER; The late nights have taken their toll and she’s exhausted, but she’s overwhelmed with happiness that her hard work has paid off.
7. BRINGING IT HOME: She begins to feel the weight of how important her work will be for both her brother and humanity at large.
8. MASTER OF BOTH WORLDS: She accomplishes what she set out to do; cure her brother’s cancer. She also sends the entirety of her research to universities, science journals, and news outlets the world over, ensuring that no single company can own the manufacturing process of this cure.
If you know you're not going to be writing it especially well, use the tropes.
One of the problems with US television in the broadcast and early cable age was that all television series were 22-26 episodes long. Another was that after the first air date, viewers would be likely to encounter them out of order.
As a direct result, television series avoided having one episode refer to another. The major exception were soap operas, which often ran 4-6 episodes every week and specifically maintained continuity -- there are/were digest magazines devoted to catching watchers up on current storylines.
Aragorn was mighty - but he was absolutely changed. Beautiful but tragic.
But this is really not comparable to Luke losing his hand, or Frodo taking on the taint of evil (and losing a finger), or Iron Man losing his hear, or Gilgamesh losing Enkidu. Stretching the hero's journey so far would only show it to be a shallow trick.
Aragorn's sacrifices occurred before the story began. He was the rightful king, yet had wandered in the wilderness for something like 90 years, defending people who not only did not appreciate him, but were actively suspicious of him.
He also had little or no hope of regaining the kingdom -- and also little or no hope of marrying the woman he loved (as Elrond had forbidden her to marry him unless he somehow became king).
That's gotta wear on a guy after the first, say, 50 or 60 years.
One of the most trenchant pieces of advice I got from a workshop instructor -- an award-winning fantasy novelist -- when I was struggling with a novel outline was "come up with an arc for all of your major characters, not just Gail [the protagonist]." Every major character in a story has something they want, has a place they start and a place they end up. Obviously stories can have multiple protagonists, but not every character who has a discernible arc is a protagonist, and not every story with an "ensemble cast" is one with multiple protagonists. (e.g., Ocean's Eleven is about an ensemble, but structurally, Danny Ocean is absolutely the protagonist.)
Story structure tools don't work particularly well as blueprints -- the major failing of the (in)famous Save the Cat! is its relentless prescriptiveness in this regard -- but they can work well as lenses and, before writing, as brainstorming tools. You need to be able to tell who your protagonist is -- and, yes, there may be more than one, but you need to understand your story structure well enough to know whether you really do have a story with multiple protagonists. And if your answer to "what does your main character want" is "oh, nothing, really, they're just fine," then you need to at least consider the possibility that there is a problem with your story, not with the general principle that stories are about characters trying to resolve problems.
I would say that The Lord of the Rings is the story of the defeat of Sauron, not a story of a hobbit making it alone to Mordor to single-handedly destroy the One Ring. Tolkien could have absolutely told the story while only focusing on Frodo, and only included characters like Sam, Aragorn, Gandalf, Merry, Pippin, Legolas, Gimli sporadically, mostly when they crossed Frodo's path (such as in The Fellowship of the Ring). He very deliberately chose not to do that.
In comparison, in Ocean's Eleven, the focus is always on Danny's plan. Sure, we get to see how the others are playing their part in the plan, but it's Danny's plan, and nothing in the story happens without a direct (at lest tangential) connection with him and the heist he orchestrated. There is nothing equivalent to the defense of Helm's Deep, the conquering of Isengard, the ride of the Rohirim and so on - entire hugely important plot points that have nothing whatsoever to do with Frodo's journey.
I would also add that it's not that hard to argue that, if you were to chose a single protagonist, it should be Aragorn, not Frodo - after all, the third and final book is named for him (The Return of the King) - the only character to have a whole book named for him. He also gets the most traditional, heroic ending - he is wed to the love of his life, and he rules with a just and rightful hand over the now purified world.
It's cool that Aragorn is the descendant of the traitorous and flawed royal line of Numenor, but it would be cooler if Aragorn had just went off with Arwen to hide in a crevice somewhere and let Faramir rule over Gondor, who certainly would be more loved by his people and seems to have a decent shot at uniting houses with Rohan.
Anyways, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Tolkien should have known that.