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

[Lauront]

You know, it's always something I've found bizarre... Does any character that isn't on Venat's side ever explicitly say the Convocation was planning more sacrifices after the third one that would bring back the people within Zodiark?

No.

I've been playing since 3.2 which, if memory serves, was the patch where Thancred decked Emmanellain, and wasn't too invested until the post-Stormblood / Shadowbringers ramp-up MSQ. I have a confession to make: I cared more for Stormblood than Heavensward, largely because the setting of HW didn't appeal to me at all, and this alongside always having been intrigued by the Ascian side of things and their plots probably lands me on a top 10 list of People With Objectively Horrible Taste In Final Fantasy XIV Online. The earliest character I latched onto was Nero in CT and post-HW, then Elidibus in post-HW and post-SB, and then I committed the cardinal sin of finding even pre-ShB Emet-Selch entertaining enough. But yeah I only started getting really invested during Shadowbringers, and I'll admit I was kind of positively vibrating on my seat during 5.2 and 5.3. Sure, the latter just kind of went and personally attacked and destroyed me, but I figured there was literally NO way it would be over for my favorite character now that it was revealed he was basically the consciousness of Zodiark. I mean why would you reveal that just a year and a half before the grand conclusion of the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga and actually keep the character around if not to build up toward a satisfying conclusion for Zodiark, right? (You know, it's amusing, because the way I thought Zodiark would be handled wound up being how they did Vrtra, using an avatar to walk around, only in Elidibus's case his Zodiark self has been broken, lethargic and locked up for millenia so he didn't transfer his full consciousness back in there very often, but I pictured there would still be a tiny part of him left inside, just hanging on to a thread.) I was on such a high during the latter half of 2020, theorizing on what would happen next and the remaining Ascians getting involved... that the entirety of 2021 felt like a year-long car crash.

Yeah, I was honestly hoping they'd treat Elidibus in that way. After Praetorium, you see that image of the dark crystal, which is before Elidibus makes his entrance. I always took it to signify his arrival on the scene. While I'm not dissatisfied with what we did get of Elidibus, they could've done even more, along the lines you mention.

As an aside, I've been talking with a real-life friend and colleague about our respective fandom grievances. She explained the entirety of Supernatural to me over lunch so she could properly convey how disappointed she was in the final episode, while I, of course, had to rant about Endwalker. I quickly realised how complicated it was to get across how disappointed I was without the set-up and context, so I drew this timeline.

Great little image. Saved it. Although, the only thing about that whole scene with her sundering him is that by the actual sound of it, it sounded more like a suicide bombing event, where she desperately threw herself at him, the star and herself all at once, in order to overcome his superior strength. I wonder how that would've looked on a t shirt. Probably a little messier to depict that kind of imagery of her. I have to admit, I've never liked the cave mural, and I like it even less now.