Not sure why you are skipping the current firmware, but whatever works for you…
Yes, I have skipped over a firmware release before without any issues and am currently running the latest one, also without any issues. I did install the previous and the current release though.
So sitting out a version shouldn’t cause issues for you from installing the following version as far as I have seen, because they are all self-contained and you will get fixes from prior releases included in the latest version. But you miss out in two ways until you update: first, the fixes for bugs in WD’s own code and second, the more up-to-date versions of supporting 3rd-party apps and packages, like for example, the web server (lighttpd), the bundled optional bash shell, etc. With each new firmware, you usally get newer versions of many of these behind-the-scenes supporting apps/tools/packages - be it a newer version of SAMBA or a newer version of lighttpd. Getting as recent one as you can get of these 3rd-party apps is always recommended because they often contain security fixes themselves. Especially if you enable things like dashboard cloud access, which opens the web server on your NAS to outside world, it is a good idea to move up to the more recent versions of 3rd party apps (though WD is still far from rolling in the latest stuff - even with their latest firmware release they finaly included lighttpd that is a year old…there has been two newer lighttpd releases since the version that’s now in our firmware)but is at least including a more recent version even if not the latest).
