Raffi: "Ah...what's happening?"
Cristobal: "Nothing that makes any sense."
I'm surprised no one has posted this yet as a commentary on the whole Picard series.
As I posted before, I was enjoying the show, but it wasn't without problems. Unfortunately, I felt the season finale was a mess. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, but I've kind of been lost as to what the plot was, why Picard and Soji were going to the planet of the androids. Sone of that's on me, but I think it's a bit of a failing in the storytelling as well.
I wasn't clear on what or why the beacon was being used. So, I understand the androids, Soji now included, are mad at the universe and want revenge I guess? The beacon opens up some portal to a thing with tentacles that will bring about the Romulan ragnorok? I'm genuinely confused, and I suppose I should rewatch to figure out what I missed.
Getting back to the quote I used, Cristobal and Raffi using the "magic imagination device" to fix the ship is just to setup it's use later for "the Picard maneuver." I guess that's the definition of a MacGuffin, isn't it? There's no other reason for it to exist, and has no real explanation for how it works, so it's pretty much just lazy writing.
I felt things wrapped up too quickly. They had nine episodes to set up this final conflict, yet the confrontation between the Romulans, the androids, the Federation, and Picard was almost over before it began.
Also disappointing: seeing Riker in the captain's chair was great, but every federation ship was exactly the same (I think the Romulan ships were too, but I'm not 100% sure). Not only does that seem lazy, but also unrealistic, based on prior Star Trek battles. And the number of ships on both sides seemed way too much. It's another example if lazy writing to just have a bigger, more numerous, more powerful enemy (it was also one of my problems with "Rise of Skywalker" and it's massive fleet of death star ships).