Makes you feel sorry for both Ribbit and Kaufmo as they let Jax into their little friend group only for him to be a toxic individual who lead the 2 to be abstracted

“Isn’t she lovely” is such a funny song to use considering the answer is a resounding ”NO”.

The craziest thing in this episode is having the “remember the good times” montage where 90% of the clips are Jax being the worst person ever

I like that everyone was able to be happy once Jax was gone.

From the poster Glitch put out and the trailer, I thought the main conflict of this episode was gonna be Jax taking over the circus in a last ditch attempt at trapping everyone else inside with him. We knew from Episode 7 that Jax has trauma related to the real world, so when the group starts to lose hope in escaping, part of him is secretly relieved. However, when the characters start to think there is a way to escape, Jax’s facade finally takes over and he goes crazy, using his conjuring ability on the rest of the player characters, which ultimately culminates in his abstraction.

By the time the song started "Isn't she lovely? Isn't she wonderful?" I was devastated, crying. And YET... I had enough sense to literally say to the TV: "No, she isn't??"

Thank you Pomni being all like "You're my closest friend to Ragatha" felt so out of nowhere

Pomni didn’t even feel like the main character by the end. Like it was the Jax show.

I think a youtube comment I read about the finale sums it up the best.
"So many hanging chekovs guns and yet none of them fired"

I think something I haven't seen mentioned is, the "real life" section feels like it takes away from the message of the show. It's like, well the REAL versions of you are doing things that actually matter, so you can just mess around because in the REAL world, youre fine.

It's also that their real life versions have progressed past their circus counterparts in basically every way, like jax being in an accepting friend group, ragatha getting away from her mom, gangle having a manga webcomic. It felt like a "you can rest easy because the real you is fine," when the circus version of them is just as "real" as the real life version.

3:52 “we can just make shapes now?” Ep 6 softly confirmed they had the power of manifestation. Kinger and the butterfly, Ragatha making Jax’s gun backfire, even Pomnis cool yet unrealistic shot. Then Ep 8 hard confirms it when Pomni manifests a door to grab a computer for Kinger. I assumed the intro to ep9 was difficult because it was more of a conscious effort and the fact that everyone was so shaken up about not being able to escape

It’s crazy how fumbled the whole brain scan plot point is because nobody actually gets to meaningfully react to it. It’s introduced at the very beginning of the episode where they all cry over it a bit, then all the Jax shit happens, and by the end they all just seem to accept their existence as brainscans despite never having any meaningful conversations or thoughts about it. There’s no crisis of identity when they realize that all of their memories and personalities are effectively false and not their own, there’s no anger or envy for their irl selves who get to continue living their lives while trapping them here without their knowledge, nothing that would actually be interesting about this concept is ever brought up. Instead they just skip to the conclusion of this development without laying any of the groundwork for them to come to this conclusion. All it took was scrolling on social media for them to resolve what should be a horrifying identity crisis.

That hug didn't feel like genuine closeness. It felt like Pomni just pitied Ragatha and faked the 'best friends' thing because she knows how desperately Ragatha needs that validation :/

The thing that makes me so sad is that two people who were still abused by Jax, Gangle and Ragtha, both who did nothing wrong, basically got no closure at all, cuz Jax abstracted and basically ran away from his problems without ever saying his sorry to anyone he actually affected

I remember someone somewhere else describing TADC's ending as "The neutral ending of a video game" and it hit me just how accurate it feels.

I think TADC would have benefitted greatly by swapping the runtimes of 8 and 9. Have Episode 8 be the hour long climax of Caine going full AM and having the revelation of conjuring and brain scans being even more of a factor. Then have the falling action of episode 9 mostly be the characters finally having a chance to let it all sink in, Jax abstracts and they sit with that as the show resolves the last threads. Conjuring was implied incredibly early and I think it could have been a fun aspect of trying to turn the tables on Caine beyond just Kinger's actions.

3:46 Isn't this the manifesting thing Kinger talked about with the butterfly though?? He said in episode 8 that all of them could do it and it just took more effort.

Also, the Scratch thing was a flashback. The Red Circle version of him is when he was just starting out, so it's depicting when he first created the circus.

I think if Gangle show more of her complex thought about Jax I would not be so dissatisfied. They did bare minimum with her not crying at first and crying later. She is Jax's main victim who was named by him and supposedly keeps this name even after Jax death, she should be allowed to say how she was mistreated by him/her but still feels empathy.

They set up that they can conjure items in Episode 6, and it was foreshadowed as early as the Pilot. Kinger with the butterfly, and Pomni conjuring the fake Exit.

I think the circus has the issue of treating sad backstories/trauma as complexity/development when the character is still flat and doesn’t really change at all.

A flashback might explain why someone acts the way they do but that doesn’t mean everyone should forgive them.