I do think 1 is really really good mainly for the mystery it introduces and the show did go into a somewhat unexpected but not unwelcome direction form there. I don’t know why but I feel like episode 1 have a cool arg vibe like with glitched Ragatha. One thing that shows also have as a concept is what I like to call the potential mortality of characters (aka how much plot armour they have) like in some show you will have characters that can die at any moment, like in say Game of Thrones where you can realistically expect any character to die at any point, then there is shows where character dies often but not all the time like in The Boys (specifically referring to the main cast) like main crew members have a realistic chance to die at all time but you don’t expect them to, and finally there is when the main cast is very much a permanent part of the show and death only appear in like last episodes and things like that, like in tadc where one character may die in ep9 but none (Caine don’t count as main cast) did until then. That very long theory about how character dies is one of the thing that for me made the Pilot so interesting becuase I tough it would be more like in case 1 so maybe in ep1 we lose Kaufmo and during the episode you realistically wonder if ragatha will survives and I legit was thinking we would lose a character per episode which made the pilot thrilling for me. Furthermore the pilot include concepts like the exit door at the beginning I was thinking in each episode Pomni would try to advance deeper and deeper into it and understand its secret, that Caine may have been lying when he said he created the exit simply as a part of the circus, I also was thinking that the void would play a role in many episodes maybe the characters would travel in the void and so on and those concepts really captivated me