It's possible we're not talking about the same thing. Microsoft has slapped "Power" on so many different things. When I google "Power Query" I get a lot of "Power BI" stuff and I try to avoid that like the plague. In my limited experience, it's flaky, unstable, and adds negative value to my reports.

From my perspective, Power Query appears to be similar to the scripting language in something like Qlikview. Except much less painful (for me). I also think "grokking" Power Query could lead to improving SQL, even. The split between SQL and things like PL/SQL or T-SQL always felt wrong to me. Just having functions as a seamless part seems like the thing that was always missing.