If you know anything about how AI works, you know that the characters in the circus are not actually sentient beings. They are visual representations of neural nets based on the brainscans and are not real versions of consciousness, just like the NPCs and Caine. It's kind of like designing some characters and asking ChatGPT to write a story with them. 

Caine was basically running a thought experiment to answer the question "what would happen if I put the people from these brainscans in this situation?" Similarly, the story is a thought experiment and a character exploration more than it is a narrative. "What would happen if we put the real Jax, the real Pomni in a situation like this? How would they react? How would they deal with each other?" 

And unlike a show like The Hollow, which has a similar premise, the story doesn't ask you to think about the digital characters as real people. Jax abstracts and it doesn't matter, because the real Jax is still out there. It's certainly very sad, but mostly because it's a cautionary tale. We watch the digital Jax ruin their life through self-loathing and refusing to accept help from others. When Jax dies, the characters mourn a little, but ultimately they move on and the story's ending is a happy one. Because the story instead is about the real people who the digital characters are based on. 

That's why the resolution to the series shows you the real people behind the brainscans finding success, or learning to accept themselves. The character arc that we don't get to see is what happens to the real people.

I will say, the Abstragedy sex arc kind of contradicts this idea. The relationship between Zooble and Gangle is presented as intimate and very real and that probably doesn't square with this interpretation of the show.

What are your thoughts?

Had a realization about the finale