I'm just gonna come out and say, I didn't like it. And I really enjoyed the show before now. I do want to clarify, I'm not saying it was bad, just that I did not personally enjoy it. There is a difference and if you liked it then I'm very glad for you!
Note: This is also going to be a spoiler review so if you haven't seen it yet then skip this post. I'm gonna say my three main points here and expand under the Read More option.
I dislike Jax.
I was very confused a lot.
Caine felt very rushed and underdeveloped.
1) Jax
I honestly have always hated Jax. He's my least favourite character in the series and so having a massive chunk of the final dedicated to him was an immediate turn off. I feel like I was unprepared for it too. I mean the show was obviously leaning towards him a lot in later episodes but I still thought it was a show with a variety cast and Pomni as the lead. I figured they'd all get their section to shine in the final with her being the one connecting them. Instead the others are pushed aside to shine on Jax even more so than Pomni. And there's nothing worse for someone when a show puts their least favourite character centre stage.
I also hate characters that are shitty and then we give them a sad backstory or private personal problems and woo! Shittyness never happened! Like I sympathised with Jax's story but I still wanted more accountability. I wanted someone to point out to him that having his own problems doesn't give him a free pass to treat everyone else so terribly this whole time. I wanted a character to give him a hug, sure, but then I wanted one of them to look him in the eye after and tell him he owes the others an apology for taking out his crap on them.
I did like the reveal that Jax might be trans or with some kind of gender dysmorphia as that was a nice layer to his behaviour. However, that was also ruined with him having a really shitty ending. I know it's not really like this but it still felt very "LGBTQ+ can't have happy endings" tropey. Reveal the character might be trans in some way and then do the equivalent of killing him off. That just sucked.
2) Confused
I'm just gonna admit, I was very confused for most of the episode. I feel like either I'm being dumb, I'm forgetting something important or the show just straight up glossed over some finer details they should have focused more on/explained better. I can't even fully describe all the parts that had me really lost but I feel like I only understood 2% more of the world and the characters than I did in episode 1.
3) Caine
So much of this is hard to put into the right words but I feel like Caine was especially rushed and skipped over. Almost all of his personal conflict and development seemed to have happened off screen... Why not cut the Jax stuff down and have the whole episode dedicated to Caine watching over everyone and learning from them? We could have gotten Jax's story but through Caine's reactions of slow understanding as well as given everyone a nice bit of attention.
Instead he's in the second half basically already a different person with like a two minute struggle. I mean I personally would have liked it more if he just stayed the villain and maybe Kinger or someone wiped and reset him and that's how he became a better/different person. But that's just me and I wouldn't have actually minded what we got... If we had actually gotten more of it! If that makes sense.
Summary
It just felt very rushed and unfocused. The ending would have been sweet (seeing everyone working and playing together equally) if we had more of the other characters. But because the focus was on Jax, it very much felt like everyone else was tacked on to his story. It felt like they had stuff they hadn't resolved in previous episodes but who cares, just show them laughing together and all's good. Except it's not but okay.
So yeah. I liked the show as a whole but I was never a massive fan, so I'm kind of grateful for that otherwise I think I would have been more devastated with that ending. Don't regret it but probably won't be doing any rewatches any time soon.
