The killing of Osama bin Laden was huge. The al Qaeda leader had not just been on the run since 9/11, but was a most-wanted man since the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. For years, analysts weighed whether he was sickly and slinking away from the public eye. When he was killed by a Navy SEAL team, hiding in semi-plain sight, it brought closure to many of his victims, but didn't bring closure to the war on terror. Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had been managing the terror group's operations for some time, even delivering the video and audio messages that once were bin Laden's domain. It can be argued that the killing of bin Laden did more damage to Pakistan -- who had to answer for how he hid there so easily, for so long -- than it did to al Qaeda.
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