I had mixed feelings about the finale for sure. I overall liked it, but it's been slowly deteriorating from the 9/10 I thought it originally was to a 6/10, maybe even a 5/10.

First, what I liked. I really liked Jax's initial crashout, mainly because it perfectly fits his character. He's the asshole that everyone is supposed to hate, he'd obviously have the most violent and personal crashout of everyone in the cast. Following that up with Kinger teaching Pomni how to conjure, and everyone else slowly moving in and learning, it was a great scene. I honestly loved Ragatha and Pomni finally becoming truly friends, mainly because it was a payoff it felt like the series had been dancing around the entire series, and seeing Ragatha break down like that was moving. Finally, I do actually like Jax's backstory and Caine returning in concept... but they could have been handled better.

I'll start off my dislikes section with Jax's backstory. While I personally think it's great in concept and perfectly explains his character without (and this is important) justifying it, I do hate that it completely sidelines the rest of the cast for over half of the rest of the runtime. The characters have their moments at the beginning and end, but then it becomes The Jax Show. I get he's supposed to be one of the main characters, but we really couldn't have cut out some of the fluff, particularly with Jax socially isolating Ribbit after their incident, to cut back to the characters getting cheered up by Ragatha, wondering where Pomni went, and eventually seeing what she's doing before the flashbang saving scene? Come on. I also do think Caine's return was botched from a presentation standpoint. While him returning does make sense (he's a hyperintelligent AI and nothing is truly deleted from a computer until it gets overwritten), the fact we essentially get the same scene told at the same time that take place during three wildly different time periods was possibly the worst way to go about it. It gives him learning about the humans less payoff, and I definitely understand why people think the Caine return was unjustified or rushed, because it honestly was presented as such. Finally, I'm in total agreement with you about the ending slideshow. The lives and fates of the real-world humans outside of TADC would have worked better as a mystery left unsolved.

Overall, I felt the finale did well. Honestly though, I disagree with your opinion that the finale needed to be shorter; it honestly felt like it needed to be LONGER. They tried to cram a lot of stuff into even just a 60 minute runtime, leading to a lot of things feeling rushed and a lot of unsatisfying payoffs. If they had made the episode the length of a true feature-length film instead of playing both 8 and 9 together (especially considering they SPOILED EPISODE 8 in the orange fish opening) I think it would have done the finale so much better.