Mixed feelings

I just finished the show and I liked both seasons for very different reasons, but I'm trying to reconcile some elements from season 2.

The way season 2 ended is so far up my alley that at first I thought it was an all time classic, but the more I think on it the more it all kind of bothers me. For one thing, most of the characters are dropped after Holstrom. Renee and her scheme are ended in one scene, Cary is never seen again, Laurie's boyfriend basically gets a cameo, Justine is never seen again. It's really jarring, and I get that that's the point in a way because that's how Caspian feels, but it's very unsatisfying as a viewer to think back and realise that a lot of characters had a clear narrative direction in season 1 that was just made irrelevant in season 2.

Pope's return was so uneventful that it was almost a joke, but it was also so dramatic that it felt ridiculous. They were culty in season 1, sure, but he was a business man doing business to achieve his goals, with Renee being the violently dedicated one. In season 2 he's an off-grid terrorist?! But he's not on their side because he's going to negotiate with the safesurf program so he can become a UI... Which makes sense to who? Him going that far off the deep end is only there as an excuse to bring Caspian back online, but it didn't need to be Pope doing it. It would have made more sense for it to be that trucker from Sacramento - he's at least erratic, violent and proven not to understand technology! It's just all so bizarrely convoluted just for the sake of including Pope again.

Maddie's mum uploading wasn't totally impossible to buy, but it did feel like a stretch that was done just to emphasise that everyone was doing it. Which leads into...

That other thing that bothered me was that once the simulation theory was shown, some of the more existentially scary ideas were dropped. We went from "DIE NOW, LIVE FOREVER" graffiti, discussions of the value of simulated life and Chanda's horrific physical death to Maddie just taking over one of her own conciousnesses without a second thought and many people choosing to upload while young without a second thought about it. The show spent so much time being explicit about how you die when you get scanned, and how you leave everyone behind when you physically die, and then in a quarter of a human lifespan half the population has done it? They just wave it off as, "uploaded consciousnesses are alive by our definition," but really avoid the point they've previously made that what wakes up in there is not the original consciousness. It just feels like a weird final direction.

(Of course, that's all totally undercut by the simulation theory being proven true so no real lives were lost, but then not-undercut with Maddie and Caspian choosing to wipe their memories and relive their teens - which is then undercut again if you think about it because they hijack two more simulations of themselves with no regard for those conciousnesses...)

It felt like the creators had an ending planned for the show from the start, then got carried away with telling an actual story for 12 episodes, and were so committed to it that they dropped as much of those earlier characters and discussions as they needed to make sure they got to that ending. I dunno, I still really liked it. Anything that goes that big and then comes to the ultimate resolution that the small parts of our lives are what make it all worth it will touch me deeply, but I feel like the show fumbled getting to that final point.

Explain to me how and why I'm wrong, I guess. I want my story-telling-analysis-brain to agree with my vibes-brain.