With how hyped I and every other TADC fan is about the finale, it suddenly made me think about the ending with HUGE reservations. TADC has always had that sort of “fanservice” ending to every episode- where aus and ocs can just write themselves into any point in the show and be fine- anddddd now Caine’s dead and the circus has collapsed. I think I’m not alone in saying that I had hoped TADC would have a sitcom ending (where all the characters go through their arcs and the story is resolved and everything else, but the main “gimmick” and world remain relatively the same). Now that episode 8 demonstrates that the circus is kaput, and episode 9 is teasing at Jax abstracting and/or the crew escaping, I think it would pretty much deflate the community in the same way that Toby Fox could by having Undertale end when you beat the game in a certain way. It really narrows the post-canon and extended universe fans and makes anyone who has a sort of au or oc feel completely invalidated making a world where the canon ending never happened. I don’t think it would necessarily be horrible, or even THAT big of a deal, but with the whole way TADC operates both in-universe and as a series, especially on the meta level, I’m concerned that a non-“everyone accepts their fate in the circus” blah blah blah ending (which would be VERY hard to write!) could limit both the fanon and possible canon TADC content by a large amount. Just spitballin’.
Edit: I also feel like the show has had so much foreshadowing with the characters all trying to make each other feel fine and meaningful in the circus, as well as the fact that we got an “escape” episode already and multiple characters attempting escapes in other ways, that it would almost be counterintuitive to have an ending with large amounts of finality, especially about the circus itself. The show wouldn’t really lose anything by ending with the characters realizing they like it in the circus better and just recreating a less hostile version of it themselves, as well as the fact that it makes sense with the whole thing of no one knowing what is ACTUALLY going on with people getting trapped.