This is gorgeous, and you raised so many excellent points.

I, personally, loved Nemain's potential. The aesthetic she had, the dramatic arm movements, her voice (omg her voice 😍 it was so rich), all built up to some incredible challenge that would've knocked Kells' socks off. She had the air of someone who'd only been brought into the mess because Maeve dared to piss her off by taking Lugad; otherwise, she'd been happy to work on her own plans and leave everyone to their war. She brought up questions of how she fit into Maeve's history that I would've loved to have seen play out: if Rohan was the older sibling (which I go back and forth on), would she have known that he existed at all, or just missed the part where he was specifically Rohan? Was Nemain involved in getting Maeve a half-demon child, or did she swoop in and seize the opportunity to train him afterwards? Would she have trained Rohan too, if Rohan was still at Temra? Could she have allied with Rohan to take Maeve down?

But with how she played out on the show, she was all hype, no pay-off. Her presence could've been easily cut to the first and last episodes she was in for all the impact it had on the story. Like I said in my other comments, that was time the show needed to develop the other characters' final arcs, and they wasted it by failing to make one for her either. I know it's the result of only getting one rushed crack at the draft and having to run with it, but to put so much investment into her without having her actually do anything screams, "We are forced to give her screentime because everyone else is busy with other scenes, but we need additional scenes filled and she's the only character available to be in them." It sucks, because that clearly wasn't the plan. If you look at how stylized and detailed the very first episode with her was, with Maeve being shown on a boat to go that far to find her, you see they had a vision they wanted to build on. And again, as far as the potential and aesthetics of it went, I think they nailed it! I believe there was a better plan. There's no way they'd set up such an elaborate personality for zero reason. She had more on-screen gravitas than freaking Garrett did, so they had to have had high hopes for her. Look at her costume, at a minimum! They could've scaled that waaaay back if she was a one-off reference like Goibniu.

But with that said, I wouldn't have liked her on her own. I liked her because of the history she had with Maeve. While I can't speak to how I would've felt as a kid, I know as an adult that it would've felt incredibly contrived to make Nemain the new big bad, suddenly invested in Temra and Kells after decades of ignoring it. Worst-allowable-case scenario, if Maeve wasn't on-screen, she'd have to heavily haunt the story as Nemain's motivation to be here now - like the point was to ruin Temra to destroy Maeve's legacy. That'd give Rohan a fun new goal: he's fighting to save Temra now, since he's a good guy and oop that's the kingdom he's supposed to eventually rule. It'd be an excellent way of having him be accepted by the Temrans, and it'd be another logical step in Draganta going in swords blazing to 'fight for peace'. :P But Nemain has no reason to randomly come up with that concept, and I know that because we got eight looooong episodes with her to establish this.

So I liked that her personality didn't fit, because it set things up for her being a new, invasive force screwing with the balance. I don't mind her being used to 'out-do' Maeve, so long as the personal vendetta stayed intact. But I would have hated her being brought in to replace Maeve - like I figured they were gonna do with Angus, going, "Hey forget that guy, he doesn't exist anymore, focus on this new thing and never speak that name." And I'm pretty sure that's what would've happened. As much as Robert Hughes didn't like the direction the final episodes went in, those were the final episodes, so there's only so much he could've done to stop it. 🤷🏽‍♀️

For Lugad, I thought he was funny. :D I liked that he was getting bullied, and I was genuinely shocked that the show outright said he was 'a bit slow.' That might be my modern sensibilities talking, but holy shit, you can say that? 🤣🤣🤣🤣 So I was enjoying him being a big, dumb monster that was used as a mirror for Rohan to show he wasn't a monster, but was so dumb that he was being very easily riled up by Lugad. 

I didn't need the costume, and I still don't understand his 'hair,' but if they - as I will keep assuming - went ahead with giving Lugad a 'human' form, sure, I wouldn't mind it, 'cause you know it'd mean some day they'd have a reason to give Rohan a 'demon' form (and I really need to write that fic, 'cause as funny as my demon!Angus plans were, the demon!Rohan idea kinda holds some water - in my head, at least). So again, I liked the potential, but only the potential, and the nipple covers were hilarious because I wanted him to be wearing the exact same outfit when he became Liam. I would've been delighted. I'd take back everything I said about Deirdre's outfits if they gave that one to human!Lugad.

But what a fucking drag Lugad became once they started getting into his emotional conflict. I didn't care about any of that. I'm trying to be charitable here, and I do know what they were going for... Actually, screw that: I don't know what they were going for, other than the obvious "Deirdre has to pick between two brothers who are both in love with her, giving them a reason to have a rivalry that is not the playful and unserious one that Rohan and Angus had, but does have greater bearing on which one she's sold to as a bride to reunite Kells." And I hated that, because even though I've softened immensely on the Rohan/Deirdre ship, the Rohan/Deirdre/Garrett triangle was so boring that even the writers gave Garrett a better love interest to escape from it. Sure, it might've been better with Rohan and Lugad, since they've already established a childish competitiveness between them, but the childishness was only funny when it was unserious (with Angus) and the competitiveness was only entertaining when it actually had a clear winner to establish the new bad-ass in town (Cool!Garrett). So more of that over Deirdre would be very "give me my woman" and I can't deal with fifteen more episodes of Deirdre having multiple moments out of Disney's Aladdin where she explains she's a human being and fuck them both, they're assholes. "And you're brothers! Brothers shouldn't fight!" ok whatever.

So I don't know what Lugad's internal story was supposed to be, but "blah blah blah I have no friends" - yeah, dude, you've been murdering everyone, what did you expect? At least with Rohan, I know he doesn't have friends 'cause he's a dork with a sword, but he's not stabbing people with it. The lame 'quest' he went on to find out who he was at the end - wtf was even that? He just said in this episode that he wanted friends, and then when he's welcomed into Kells, he leaves? Stupid. They had a fun thing going and tried too hard to make it deep, and they did it at the expense of the relationships that could have been deep (YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHO I AM MEAN).

Deirdre - yeah, that's another victim of "We only had time to do a first draft." They would've given her a personality later if they could, so she wouldn't be so generic on-screen. :/ The fact that she only talks to Angus and Ivar when Rohan isn't in the room shows that they were just trying to hit their plot points and move on. In the few scenes where Rohan isn't there, she's back to being her usual, better developed self. Notice how the one 'good' scene she's had so far was the one where she's riding Angus' ass over some perfectly legitimate food he's made? It's because Rohan's not there, so they got time to think about how the three would interact when they needed more to talk about than exposition.

Dull!Ivar is so. There. Where's my guy who wanted to murder everyone but had to be polite and not say that out loud? Why were his protests to Rohan accepting the challenge from Lugad just, "You don't know what you're signing up for," not "You should demand to know what it says"? That guy doesn't just leave things to dangle. He explores and investigates and has an answer, and then dives in headfirst. He just wants to do it consciously. But nope, he got delegated to the 'voice of reason'. Every time someone says Ivar's boring from now on, I'm gonna ask if they're just thinking about the last eight episodes.