TADC finale spoilers below the cut!!!! I caved and watched the leak and honestly I needed to rant about it-
Honestly, I feel like the episode would’ve been okay if it wasn’t the finale. I actually liked a lot of the individual scenes, and I thought the cinematography was great. I even liked the ending!! The idea of them being brain scans was always one of my favorite theories, so I was hyped to see that’s the direction they went in. It’s just the way that everything was presented that really makes it lackluster.
For starters, despite being an ensemble show, no one besides Jax, Pomni, and Caine really did anything meaningful. The others had little moments here and there, but they were either repeat scenes of things we’d seen in other episodes or nothing that ultimately furthered the main plot. And speaking of the main plot, so much of it was left unanswered and unexplored that by the end I was sitting there like “… really? That’s it?” You’re telling me no one had any qualms or existential crisis about how they were technically fine this whole time? They just accept it? Why was Caine just sent to the void when he got deleted? What happened to Bubble? They had such a strong set up for a banger ending but decided to waste their time by telling us the backstory of the already most fleshed-out character who, in the end, isn’t even our main character.
On the topic of Jax, I’m think I’m preaching to the choir here when I say that he was genuinely the worst part of this finale. Out of the hour runtime this episode had, you're telling me that there were 22 UNINTERRUPTED minutes dedicated to just Jax and his backstory? In the FINALE?? That’s supposed to be about EVERYONE??? It genuinely pisses me off. I might be a bit biased, considering my absolute hatred for Jax, but when you break it down that flashback sequence could’ve been a.) A lot shorter, or b.) In any other episode. And it ultimately did nothing to endear me to him!! In fact I kinda hate him more for it!! It’s fine for authors to have their favorite character, but when the favoritism effects the story so much that the audience ends up knowing more about the author’s precious lil blurbo than the actual main character, it becomes a huge problem. Overall I think the plot was kinda lost in this episode; the pacing issues finally caught up to them and ultimately instead of trying to use every last second this show had wisely, we ended up with more unneeded Jax content. While I like what they were going for, it ultimately just didn’t land.