Knee jerk reaction: this show was more spectacle than story. The nostalgia tugs were very effective, but I was a little disappointed that the core trio were almost side characters, mostly serving to link everything back to Char/Lalah/Challia. It’s like, just as their personal arcs and motivations were peaking, everything took a hard pivot to supporting the alternate timeline.

I do like the reveal of how things were initially set up. And I’m glad I was wrong about the setup. (I did go back and look at the rose salvage scene, and I saw where I got confused - the close ups of the cockpit were kind of mottled. I mistook that for damage, but Challia and Comoli(sp?) were discussing how it looked distorted.)

I also went and double checked the clone newtype line - it was Xavier who said that Gihren was looking to deploy clone cyber newtypes. At first I was irritated that it seemingly violated Chekhov’s Gun. Then I realized, is this supposed to imply that Bask was working with Gihren? Those episodes were full of allusions to something fishy going on, but with all of the narrative jump cuts I was having a very hard time following. If this was obvious to others watching, well, nobody ever accused me of being the brightest bulb lol.

Also, they really let the Eva flag fly during the finale.

In all, I definitely enjoyed WfM more. GQX seemed like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. And I definitely did not enjoy the frantic non-linear storytelling. But the nostalgia bits hit all the right neurons, and it was definitely an experience.