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

[ZavosEsperian]

I dunno. I just can't find the mid-air rescue all that contrived when we've seen Ancient magicks do precise things like pluck a specific person's soul from the Lifestream and conjure them the clothes they were wearing before they vanished, or recreate a whole city from memory and inhabit it with shades of the past, or erase memories from a very specific starting point. Mind you, all of this was done by unsundered Ancients like Venat, so I don't see why she's the one deserving of flack when she does it.

There are lots of contrived failures within the plot and usually, when they happen, it is to a character who should be able to overcome the issue at hand without much struggle. Venat failing to catch Meteion is one specific example that has long standing implications on the plot since catching Meteion would cause the plot to end right there unless Hermes had a few spare Meteia in his proverbial back pocket. Furthermore, it is likely the most egregious case of someone failing when they honestly shouldn't from the protagonists side of the story. I will list some of the other cases below since there are quite a few I can name off of the top of my head.

Some would argue the early loss against Ranjit in 5.0 was a case of contrived failure. Or, particularly more infuriating if you are a ranged class at the time, when Misija gives up control over Mikoto inside of the Bozja storyline, thereby opening themselves up to a ranged attack to neutralize her. Throwing Nidhogg's eyes off a bridge, while seemingly a good idea, ends up coming back haunt the protagonists later down the line. There are likely others, but none of these have the same consequences from contrived failure as what Venat's failure had.

To me, these sorts of devices cause more plot contrivances than not and they tend to come at the expense of the story as a whole since then clarification is likely needed to explain why character X couldn't do action Y. It isn't per say a fault of Venat herself, it is more of a fault of the writers.