What started the season? Mallory and Lana talking about Woodhouse and missing the funeral. How did the season end? Archer gets to say goodbye to Woodhouse, in a pretty noir fashion.
Dreamland wasn't about Archer "waking up." It wasn't about resolving the storyline of Deadly Velvet. It was about a man saying goodbye to a friend he never acknowledged in the only way he could. The pigeon-holes of favorite characters were not those characters. They were archetypes lifted from Archer's subconscious, and externalization of hopes, fears, and desires personified by the people who mean the most to him.
Everyone keeps expecting this season to obey logic, but dreams defy logic. You ever woken up from a dream feeling like everything was satisfactorily concluded in a tight narrative? Nope. Some of us dream in black and white. Some dream in color. Archer dreams in noir, and finds the courage to do the things he cannot normally do -- like say goodbye to the closest thing to a father he's ever known.
Season 8 resolved that, and that was the point. You know Season 9 will have him wake up, recovered, do some PT, and get back to regular hijinks like Season 8 never happened. Because it was all a dream. It was private. It was grieving.