But if Sasuke's villainhood ends, the conflict ends, and the manga would have nowhere to go but to a conclusion of some sort. Sasuke is the center of conflict. It would be illogical to me for his villainhood to end when the manga is still so far from ending. Sasuke has to remain an antagonist so Naruto can save him from himself. Just like you said, that's always been in the cards. If Sasuke is no longer an antagonist there's nothing to save him from. His villainhood HAD to be prolonged somehow.

And I don't know, I think Sasuke has a reason to be angry at the Konoha elders. The way he's dealing with it isn't intelligent or mature, but the emotion itself isn't that unreasonable. And I actually find him being angry at the village much more interesting than his being angry at just Itachi. And this entire scenario brings into focus the fact that the villages really fuck over these kids, and I really like that, too.

I've read three different translations of the chapter, because I don't always trust scanlators to get it right, so I go to mangahelpers and compare them. Two of the three translations I've read have Sasuke saying he only plans to target the elders, and doesn't plan to go after anyone else. The Binktopia translation is the only one I've seen that has him say "that's as far as I've got," and I don't tend to care for the translations they use very much. Kisame's response about the bottom ninja protecting the top ninja and calling Sasuke naive also makes more sense if it's in response to Sasuke saying he has no intention to target anyone but the elders.