What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Lauront]

I think Emet-Selch's hope was that he'd be able to put his brilliance, such as it was, to better use in the Convocation, away from Elpis, but by the end of it, he realised the guy is completely unfit to hold such office. He could've used his office to advocate his approach to the other ancients - instead, he chose to doom the entire universe, including his supposedly beloved creations.

Fundamentally, Hermes's speech to the fire wolf was very telling. His empathy and pain at having to put the creature down was sincere and real, but he urges it to "hate, if it be your wont - we are not undeserving" specifically. Hermes is distraught over the way the creations are discarded in large part because he projects himself onto them. And deep down, he has begun to hate. Zenos, for all his massive, massive flaws and crimes, does not actually hate. He'll murder you and look down upon you, but he doesn't hate you. He is driven by love, as twisted and weird and unsettling as it might be, and there is a sincerity in it that allowed him to self-reflect, have an epiphany, and then transform into a giant space dragon after eating a big rock.

In that way, love, support, and connections emerge as the answer to despair, not engineering an environment of suffering to force people through until they just get used to living through it. (Well, a few of them, anyway. Most of them probably just die but, yes, anyway, light everlasting and all that.) That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

In Zenos's case, it's just a pity that his way of expressing that love left him more or less alienated by the end, but yes it was essentially a redemption arc of a sort that kept with his character, even if his philosophical outlook is one the Scions trenchantly reject. Although now that you put it that way, I agree that it's Hermes who in fact ended up living out the philosophy he was exhorting the feral lykaones to adopt - which also opened Emet-Selch's eyes to how poor a fit he was for where he worked. I suspect Hermes was good up to that point at cloaking his true character; at most seen as a bit eccentric.

We saw both through Emet-Selch indulging Hermes's requests (as do many other researchers, frankly) and the Elpis sidequests that 1) the ancients had a very broad array of personalities; 2) some shared Hermes's empathy towards the creations (just not to the same unrealistic, ridiculous degree) and 3) they were quite open to change where they saw the positives in it. They have many of the same anxieties and feelings as do regular humans, and I don't think it's an accident that by the end of one of the sidequests, you're given three options on how to say you perceive them: as gods, as not too different, and as fundamentally inscrutable. I think given their unique mix of traits, there is truth to all three.

[Kyohei]

This questline along with the siblings really put the main narrative in a bad spot by specifically showing how ancients were eager to learn and adopt new ways of thinking.
The sibling one showing as you said that they did have empathy toward creations contrary to what Hermes thought. Proving further he was so self absorbed he failed to see how others thought.

[Brinne]

In Zenos's case, it's just a pity that his way of expressing that love left him more or less alienated by the end, but yes it was essentially a redemption arc of a sort that kept with his character, even if his philosophical outlook is one the Scions trenchantly reject.

I'm largely paraphrasing a friend here when we discussed this together, but Zenos, even after all is said and done, even after he he personally was able to evolve the expression and direction of his love in a way that frankly, considering Zenos, could be considered a miracle - and through that, finally achieving what he had been dreaming of since he came back to life in Stormblood - still being left at the edge of the universe, uncertain, questioning if it was all worth it - asking you if you felt it was all worth it - also felt like a poignant and vulnerable expression of the other half of Endwalker's themes: the blunt lack of certainty and lack of objective answers to meaning in the universe. There's no certainty or locked-down answer even after defeating the embodiment of despair with your giant theme music-bearing dragon friend. And how you felt about that is something largely left in your own hands, private and personal.

(And yet at the very, very end, the existence of that love was still re-asserted through the implication he may have been the one responsible to teleporting you back to the ship, too.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Zenos was hands down the best part of Endwalker and the most successful execution of its themes in all regards. Anyone who hated him after this expansion is wrong, objectively wrong!

[KizuyaKatogami]

I'm largely paraphrasing a friend here when we discussed this together, but Zenos, even after all is said and done, even after he he personally was able to evolve the expression and direction of his love in a way that frankly, considering Zenos, could be considered a miracle - and through that, finally achieving what he had been dreaming of since he came back to life in Stormblood - still being left at the edge of the universe, uncertain, questioning if it was all worth it - asking you if you felt it was all worth it - also felt like a poignant and vulnerable expression of the other half of Endwalker's themes: the blunt lack of certainty and lack of objective answers to meaning in the universe. There's no certainty or locked-down answer even after defeating the embodiment of despair with your giant theme music-bearing dragon friend. And how you felt about that is something largely left in your own hands, private and personal.

(And yet at the very, very end, the existence of that love was still re-asserted through the implication he may have been the one responsible to teleporting you back to the ship, too.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Zenos was hands down the best part of Endwalker and the most successful execution of its themes in all regards. Anyone who hated him after this expansion is wrong, objectively wrong!

I’ll be the objectively wrong one here (for once) and say i didn’t enjoy Zenos all that much but i’ll admit it’s mainly due to my bias of them having him kill off Varis whom i found so much more interesting and also outliving Elidibus lol.