It's really, really good, but I think for a lot of people it was so subtle they never realized it was happening. They got boiled like a frog. Episodes 1, 2 and 3 all have big action scenes and a central Adventure Plot to be resolved... still, every episode has a subplot where deeper emotional conflicts happen during the adventure.
However, this structure instantly falls apart by episode 4, when Caine takes a suggestion and has them work in a fast food place. That episode has no action scene, no "adventure plot" to solve, they just have to work a job for a whole day. The entire episode is just character drama. Then by episode 5 the structure is just gone. The lightning round format means none of the adventures even have time for a plot, it's just scenario, scenario, scenario, one after the other, and it becomes clear that the real point is the character drama, the history of these people, their traumas, the way they interact.
Episodes 6 and 7 (haha) are the last dying gasps of the adventure format. Episode 6 doesn't have an adventure plot beyond "shoot eachother" because Caine literally doesn't care anymore, and so the episode is really all about exploring the tenuous burgeoning friendship between Jax and Pomni, again focusing almost exclusively on character drama. And episode 7 is the calm before the storm, the characters trying one last time to get out of the circus, the show's last attempt to be formatted like a normal story that adheres to narrative convention, only for the complexity of Jax's character to deny Caine the narrative format he wanted.
The Last Act is not an action movie. I understand why they included episode 8 with it, because 8 and 9 form a pretty cohesive single two-part episode. And it is ALL character drama. The show was never about running away from monsters or going on adventures. It's about people, exploring their dysfunctions, the struggle of relating to eachother. That's all the movie is.
Don't be a boiled frog. Go in with the right expectations.
