I have no idea how this last episode passed me by. I have YouTube set to notify me when you upload something but it failed to; and up until now I've caught each episode right when it released.
In any case, I watched it last night. Fantastic work as usual. But when it ended I felt kind of... Empty? Dissatisfied? I realized after some reflection that what I felt was sadness.
This was a series about watching a gentle, quiet man be pushed to his limits. Watching him become the very thing he hates. Watching him throw his life away in a final blaze of vengeance. It was tragic, but to drive its point home, it couldn't have ended any other way.
This series illustrates the true cost of revenge. That emptyness I felt afterwards was the emptyness that revenge leaves on the world; a cold, zero-sum game. Those that satisfy their revenge, even if they survive, never really live to enjoy its fruits because they have forfeited some essential part of their humanity to achieve it. Life isn't the Count of Monte Cristo, where you can have your vengeance and then sail off into the sunset. You have to live with the choices you've made, or die realizing them.
I think it was a masterful conclusion and the fact it's taken a day for me to collect my thoughts is a testament to that.