At the end of the episode as Elle is flying away on Joseph's motorcycle, who is on the other motorcycle on the right flying towards her?

I noticed that too, and unfortunately have no answer! It's a mystery, I guess.

I found the finale serviceable. They didn't really save any surprises for last, but everything got wrapped up for the most part - the Officer Davis story seemed to get sidelined after the clip show, so it seems undercooked - and we got a nice, open-ended conclusion.

Overall, I'd give the show a 7/10, compared to my perfect 10/10 for both of the films. I think it's good, but never quite entered "great" territory. It definitely didn't help that the pacing wasn't all that great and it still baffles me why they did a clip show. The animation honestly grew on me, even if I still would have preferred something like Black Out 2022's. All in all, I liked it. And honestly, as long as the stuff they come out with for this franchise is better than the K.W. Jeter novels, I'll be a happy man.

I doubt this will get another season (it does leave room for one, but I think the backlash this initially got might ruin that and I'm have no idea what ratings this got), but I think if that live-action series happens, we'll do these discussion threads again. A live-action series will probably generate more interest, so I'm sure there'd be plenty more people coming here than there were for Black Lotus.

Wow. As an episode I found it almost 100% fantastic. As a finale, well, a finale can only be as good as its buildup. And well what they built up wasn't really that intriguing. And sadly like you said they didn't really leave that many surprises. It was mostly things you'd expect to happen at some point like Marlowe and Joseph getting killed in the most Hollywood way possible.

Biggest flaw in my mind was Joseph's conclusion. For most of the show he was a red herring and only in these final episodes did it start to feel like he was a character we could root for with that revelation about his past. Unfortunately they killed him off in a super imo, unnecessary way at a point way too early in the story. Wallace already implied as much that losing those archives wouldn't be much of a loss to him. So while I can understand his character's motivation for killing himself with all that guild inside, from a plot perspective it comes off very underwhelming and half-baked. I think Davis' sacrifice would have been more impactful. She got a lot of development throughout the show and like you said, her story really didn't go anywhere at the end. You could basically remove her from the show and it would still happen like it did.

One positive aspect I will say is that the show managed to surprise me. All this time I thought this was going the nihilistic and often boring way (when told badly) that prequels go. We know that Niander Wallace lives so it stands to reason that all these characters would die because he seemingly stands unopposed in 2049. I didn't factor Elle being able to cause his blindness (that I forgot about) and then escaping.