Tu Bian Yingxiong X Episode 12 Discussion

I am confused. This episode was rather subpar (actually, I think it was bad but I do not want to be overly critical). Yet people are calling it peak cinema? What was so peak? - the fact that we got 4-minute-long repetition of scenes we've already seen an episode or two prior? and then 8-minute-long fight? Not to mention that Bowa as a villain was very disappointing - she was made into just a dumb pathetic woman archetype who is jealous of the other woman, hence only fights and blames this other woman. Whereas she could have been much more interesting.
Even compared to Old E-soul vs New E-soul narrative, we barely got to know anything about the old E-soul but we knew he had his own personal boundaries and he acted in accordance to them and once he didn't that was his downfall, which I think made him pretty interesting and he wasn't even a villain... But Bowa got introduced as a proud woman character who could inspire other women to become heroes. She could have followed in that direction, keeping her pride and confidence while posing as a healthy competition to Queen. Instead she got discarded as the most pathetic envy-driven self-pittying character no one gives a fvck about (possibly to enforce the 'darkness consuming people' narrative). I mean, she was clearly written to be discarded so why waste time on a character when they could write her as just a stereotype, right?
The good thing about this episode (aside from the animation which has been consistently good) was that Queen grew up a bit from being an individualistic person to someone who is open to a friendship with Cyan. They only showed that in like 1 minute of screen time though, so it felt rather rushed, thus didn't have such a strong impact (again, wasted potential).

Somehow, I feel that because the series started strong we are now hyping it solely for what didn't drop in quality - the animation. I would much rather the animation was lower quality but I got some actual substance (like in the first two arcs).

And yes, I do expect people disagreeing with me. I realise I am being very critical. You can for sure enjoy this episode. I just personally wanted to outline why I don't feel good about it in the sea of comments heavily prising it.