I don't really see a paradigm shift in any of this - the goalposts were never set in the first place. I doesn't operate like that. We were always acutely aware of the underlying assumptions involved in the use of Cepheid variables as 'standard candles', and there were observational anomolies that needed mechanisms to explain them. Now with better and better observational data flooding in we can come to grips with this and further refine their use.
Cheers -