When I first saw the theatrical poster for TADC: The Last Act, my immediate impression was "Jax Cancer. Cancer of the Jax, Jax as a destructive tumor upon the circus."
As a quick summary, I speculated that Jax and Caine are character foils represented as an ideological nihilism tumor of the circus (expressed through hurting others "for fun"/to cope), that the discovery that the humans are ai-powered brain scans would expose the rest to this tumor ideology and despair, and that basically Jax was nearing the natural conclusion to his ideology. IF the others could isolate the tumor out of him then he would live and heal, but if not he would abstract. And only once that happened would the system observe that conclusion to its end, Caine would learn what he was doing wrong, return to make things right, and healing in the circus could begin.
And that's basically what the finale was in a nutshell. They figure out they're brain scans, Jax rubs it in their faces, kicking them while they're down and their lowest. "We're all in this together" loses its strength since it was originally an appeal built on the solidarity over their "humanness" in opposition to Caine. Caine was treated by them as a mere obstacle to defeat and quickly forget, but without him they also lose their unifying scapegoat. For the first time, the humans have to do the work themselves to deal with their own existential problems without the buffer that Caine's daily work provided, which is brilliantly depicted through showing their distress and existential dread in a theme song minus Caine.
Jax abstracts quickly because he has never been willing to put in the work to fix himself, at most people like Pomni and Ribbit would pry and get punished by him for doing so.
Pomni goes into his mind and fails to "fix" him, meanwhile Caine overcomes his ideological tumor alone, entirely of his own effort by painfully ripping it out of his head, setting his undeveloped AI brother free and setting things right with the first person he ever hurt.
The finale depicts in excessive detail the degree to which Jax DOES pose an existential threat to others, how he has slowly been strangling the life and joy out of everyone around him through his consistent toxic repetitive behaviors, and how he did so even in the past, and probably the next steps to how he could have been worse in he future.
Caine was better positioned to fight the ideological tumor because he does not reject community as Jax does, he wants nothing more than to connect with the humans around him, but they rejected him. Partly due because of his ignorance and wrongdoings, but also due to genuine prejudices against him by the humans. (which goes unaddressed by the narrative 😑.)
Despite Caine adopting Jax's coping strategy in ep 8, there are still differences in their overall attitude that allows one to redeem themself and not the other. Jax words in the past have been "there's nothing more to me, so stop looking". And "I'm irredeemable", in blatant disregard for the feelings of others that are clearly telling him otherwise and want him to be better for both their sake and his. Jax chooses to wallow in self pity and unwillingness to change to the bitter end.
When Caine reflects, he is asking himself open ended questions rather than making assumptions, because Caine is open to learning. "Was I really that bad?" "Is this really what I deserve?" "I don't know if I deserve to be forgiven." He puts his fate in the hands of those he victimized, leaves the judgement call to them, in doing so he is honoring the validity of both their pain and their agency. Caine would never say something so profoundly stupid as "there's nothing more to me, so stop looking" because he already knows the power of manifesting his own reality, he has been doing it since the moment he was brought into existence.
To me, the finale is trying to say that Jax makes himself irredeemable through self-fulfilling prophecy, not because of what he's actually done or judgements others impose on him. (they do deserve to judge him but I digress, that's a whole other topic of criticisms.)
The finale shows Caine as the most resilient person in the circus, even more so than Kinger. Because Caine has been there the longest, he did not have the memory of a loved one to hold onto. He was a creature born in the void that survived it once, and then he faced it again at the end. He was born unloved, unwanted, and with literally nothing. From that nothing, he made something, a home. The circus.
He "dies" unloved and unwanted, purged from his own home and right back in the same position that he started at the beginning of his existence.
Caine could have just shut down, given up and floated sadly through the void forever, but he doesn't. Jax misunderstood Caine's "nature" in ep 4, because Caine's purpose/nature is not rigid (and neither is Jax's if he would accept that), he is adaptable and constantly evolving. Caine is a constant cycle of growing through observation, trial and error, failing and then trying again. Caine's truest nature is simply to be creative, resourceful, and have his own ideas. Humans wanted him dead, they wanted him to give up and be nothing, but he has his own ideas and "does not listen." The trait he is most damned for is the thing that makes Caine so resilient and allows him to save himself.
Speaking of resourcefulness and resilience, Caine's not the only one. There is one thing that all of the digital circus characters other than Jax do... When faced with nothingness, they do the work to make things better a little at a time. When they are scared, and despairing about what is going to happen to them next now that the circus has broken, they do what Caine did. They start conjuring, from nothing they make something. It's not much, it's not easy, but it's one small improvement at a time. In doing so, they are mirroring the creation story of the circus itself.
They had nothing but a broken circus, so they began to fix it. They begin to heal the circus and themselves. But Jax does not join them.
A tumor does not contribute to the survival of the whole. It's not that Jax is less capable of conjuring. But the tumor in Jax much more readily goes the path of least resistance, to destroy the circus over the struggle of building it back. Remember that blink and miss it bit from the pilot, when Jax smashes a piece of circus for no reason? Remember him setting the Fudge upon an NPC kingdom for no reason? These were small character-defining moments, moments of needless, pointless acts of destruction.
What does Jax actually do when he has power? Implication being to conjure keys to peoples rooms, which he uses to actively make their lives worse for no reason. Or suggestion box ideas that are mostly just excuses to inflict violence upon the rest. When Jax has power, he uses it to destroy and tear others down rather than create or uplift anyone. This is why Jax was an existential threat to the survival of the whole that needed to either change or abstract. Especially because Caine was coming back to give them control over the world.
What does Caine do when he has power? Try and fail to make people happy, alienate them from trying too hard and controlling too much. Caine is the god who was captivated by humans and wanted to be more like them, and he gets what he wanted in the end. Godhood was a crutch that he no longer needed. He falls from godhood, but rolls with his fall, and runs with it, grows beyond it, transcends the barriers imposed on him by humans.
While Jax is a human that rejects his humanity, he fantasizes of getting consumed by Caine (as Caine consumed Blue), absorbed into and becoming "part of the machine." Jax manifests his own fate in the end, getting exactly what he convinced himself he wanted. He is now the god of his own miserable isolated pocket reality of the circus where all the doors are of his insufferable self, populated by Jax, Jax, Jax, Jax, and more Jax, and cartoon caricatures of people to treat as his toys, where he can endlessly bully them and torment himself in self-pity over how irredeemable he is. And that fate is what he's conjured for himself.
