Since the finale is finally out, I'm going to bullet point a few of my personal gripes having watched it a second time. I'm putting this under a read more section because it's quite long.
The Finale: 2/10
Entire Series: 4/10
Jax - Complex but underwhelming. Message behind his/her story is great, the execution was not.
Pomni's character is extremely disappointing. I see where the dissonance between Eps 1-4 and 5-9 starts to come in because Pomni doesn't engage with other characters in a meaningful way (save for Jax). She flips back and forth in 8 & 9 with Caine's deletion. (Ex. "You just don't listen!" "Are you sure? There's no undo button?") She kinda leaves Zooble alone to cope with the fact they're all brain scans and then she chases Jax down. A lot of her writing choices seem disconnect to what made her a main character in the first place, and all supposed development is earned off-screen.
Bluetooth had no reason to show up. It didn't offer anything to progress Caine's redemption arc forward as he was able to start interpret solutions and develop sincerity on his own. Same with the Ragatha and Pomni hug shot that went on forever- it felt like we were wasting time in favor of visuals.
Caine's redemption, although rushed, felt like it was needed for this finale. I don't think Jax AND Caine could've been both killed off because it literally destroys any conflict the cast needed to overcome. It had to be one or the other. But there's NO explanation to why Caine got rerouted to the void instead of a trash bin or why the Blue AI had such animosity to keep the humans trapped.
Kinger's character is solely for lore exposition, that didn't end up mattering all that much in the finale anyway. He barely flinches after Caine is deleted, despite saying Caine was his greatest achievement. I was expecting more interpersonal conflict or some kind of gripe between the two. Everything regarding lore shifted blame towards Scratch, who didn't have an ounce of dialogue throughout the show.
Zooble is reduced to a therapist once again, but it feels err... redundant? Because we've seen this already in Ep 6. They kinda lost their edge, similar to Pomni in my eyes. But instead of Jax, it was in favor of Gangle.
Gangle should've had time to move past and resolve her traumatic experiences and bullying with Jax by now. Episode 6 should've been THE moment Gangle toughens up a bit because we've already established Jax was a piece of shit to her. It was repetitive and another arc that wasted time instead of progressing an overarching plot forward.
Gumigoo? Queenie? Where are they?
There are so, so many loose threads about C&A, Scratch, Kinger, Queenie. What was the company trying to accomplish? Why is there a massive plot hole between Kinger's irl age and circus age? His human body should've been in his late 40s, early 50s if he had joined the Circus in 1999 with Scratch, but that's not relevant I guess? If Abel was telling the truth about C&A in Episode 7, we literally can't interpret it because Caine debunks it as fabricated. Was C&A doing something shady behind the scenes and the Circus was the only way for them to have an escape? Is the company abandoned?
Last but not least, we have Ragatha. As a character, she's very interesting. She seemed to be the only one that called out Jax's bullshit and most of the characters thought she was being insincere at times. I always read it as her just trying her hardest to fit in and people excluded her for no reason. Her story doesn't really lead anywhere meaningful and the most we get is Ragapom development off-screen. In the finale, she is there just to push forward Jax's narrative. We get small hints of her life but nothing to resolve on her own.
In this finale, everyone's story drives forward Jax's narrative, and they don't resolve their prior conflicts on their own. There's no proper resolution or build up to a meaningful story because there wasn't much exposition in the first place, and the overarching story seems so shallow if you weren't invested in Jax.
I think that's about it. I'll self-reblog this post if I have more to complain about.
I feel like episodes 5-7 were finally starting to land somewhere, and episodes 8-9 killed off any tension and refused to elaborate on plot holes that severely impacted everyone else's story. I felt empty and unsatisfied at the ending, like we had been wasting time instead of finally picking up plot beats that were sprinkled throughout the past episodes. I'm not even a huge fan of Kinger, but god, I would've liked to see why he ended up there with Scratch. Maybe he didn't want to go alone? Who knows.
