It's kinda interesting how few gunpla kits we've gotten from this series. GWitch had a hell of a lot but there are only a handfull for gquuuuuuux.
For some reason they're widely spacing out the kit releases. Probably to avoid spoilers for the show while it airs, but last I heard they're selling ok.
The underage smoker childhood friend lol
I've been very "wait and see" with Shuji because in FLCL there's a character just like him whose actions can only be contextualized after watching the whole show, but also I understand how not fun it is to have a blank cipher of a character while watching week-to-week. Usually they do a better job making the character compelling by way of mystery but I don't think it worked quite so well here in this show.
Nuuuuuu you can't just steal my thread from me nuuuuuu 
(I'm kidding post away. I've been waiting 24 hrs to make the threads after the show each week since that seemed about when people had watched the ep, but we're getting to the end and if people want to react immediately that's fine too. Also, like it could be WW3 soon so...)
The final confrontation with Kycilia happening on a theatre stage was a forceful, but still pretty good visual symbolism.
It's a recreation of a scene in the last episode of Zeta Gundam, with the exact same setup of people debating ideology while pointing guns at each other. Just that it's Kycilia instead of Haman this time, I guess.
What's kinda weird/interesting here is that Kycilia is spouting off rhetoric that's almost word-for-word Char's Counterattack Char, to Char, and Char's having none of it. The scene only works as Gundam interrogating itself as meta-text, because it's about the futility of fascist death-cults misinterpreting historical materialism and the dramatic irony of the same people making the same mistakes over and over and over again no matter how many times they get a do over... and then the punchline is this Loony Tunes ass FLCL moment
because as much as the old smothers the new, the new has the energy to bring something new to the table.
Char getting subconsciously magically dressed into his uniform by Lalah was utterly hilarious and blatantly a "hey guys its me, the guy from the merch" moment.
Ginga Bishonen Char Aznable
Char saying what y'all have been thinking for the past 6 episodes
However, the ending was just awful imo. If that is Amuro in the graffiti man's soul, or inside that Gundam, then any conflicts from the G-Spam universe become completely meaningless.
Last ep isn't going to (just) be Amuro in Gramps vs. Char's Red Gundam, it's going to be Machu fighting for the right for her timeline to exist, because the point of multiverse stories is that no matter how bad things get, a better world is always possible. After all, 
: "In the dark times, should the stars also go out?"
and also as tribute/send-off to U.C., and a creative statement that the new doesn't have to be beholden to the old.
Also as the target audience Beyond the Time is the sickest beat drop ever to give a character who came from "the other side" so I forgive all GQuuuuuuX's many failings and will be buying the merchandise.
(For real I'll leave my real criticisms till next week, provided we're not nuclear dust)
Edit: The title for next episode is a quote from Tomino's autobiography: "That's why I am... on the path to Gundam."
Like, I really really like that the moral of the story is that "racism can arise just from the ambient culture, if inherent biases are left unchecked and unchallenged" but man was this the clumsiest metaphor to do that with, Oda really bit off more than he could chew here
The actual problem is that Oda is using monarch's as an allegorical stand-ins for politicians, so Luffy overthrowing Walpole's regime but saving Vivi's seems hypocritical from a Leftist perspective unless you sorta glaze your eye's over and replace "King" with "Person who's Ruling the country", cos then Luffy only beats up those who are self-serving and leaves the one's who (largely) represent the wills of their peoples alone.
Except King Triton, yeah the right-wing coup was worse but he deserved it for letting things get that bad in the first place, fuck Fishman Island really is the worst arc
I knew our guy was Based AF but I had no idea how based.
I mean, he almost dropped a rock on Granada and it was literally postmodern author-as-God fiat that stopped that from happening
And then his solution to being trapped in this timeline for being too beloved by the author/audience stand-in Lalah is to "disappear" (the) God (of this world), so he's not ideologically out of the anti-hero woods yet, but yeah this Char is closer to Quattro Bajeena given what he says to Kycilia about Newtypes. Which is really interesting, since Zeta's probably the one time we see the character at his best, fumbling attempts at mentorship and revolution and all.