I find it amazing how they fucked up with Cinder, a character that should have been a walk in the park.
Basically, over the course of the show, we had Cinder and her lackeys, then Salem, then Team WTCH, then Team WTCH with Cinder as Salem’s right hand woman/second in command.
So basically we had Cinder’s role be: “Final boss

Dr. Eggman with Salem being who you fight after you collect all seven Chaos Emeralds

regular boss fight

having a Darth Vader/Palpatine…Azula/Ozai relationship with Salem”. (Also, the V2 infiltration didn’t really go anywhere)
And in V8, you could argue that they had Cinder getting more dangerous and ready to try and usurp Salem by having her go “Salem, I’m the one who gets shit done around here. I’m the only Maiden you have. While you’re sitting in your lair, I’m the one leading the fight against Ruby and her friends, and I’m the one who got you two relics. Who’s the one who made up for the failure at Haven? Me. Who’s the one who got you relics? Me. Who’s the one who killed Ironwood and destroyed the kingdom of Atlas? ME! Cinder! Acknowledge Me! Bitch.” Causing Cinder to try and overthrow Salem to become the true head of the table.
And then you can have Salem have Cinder be more Grimmified and just say it’ll make Cinder more powerful, and then like Palpatine made Darth Vader’s suit a POS, Cinder becomes more uncontrollable and less of a human and more like a rabid that needs to be put down, causing Cinder to only be the attack dog of the one person that can bring her to heel: Salem.
And then Ruby kills Cinder and gains the power of the Fall Maiden because of course she does.
Instead, everything is an incoherent mess. Just have it be where Salem fed on Cinder’s drive to never be weak again, and just have her go “all of this can be yours. Just pledge your loyalty to me, and your dreams will be reality”. (And yes, I’m sure this is something that was done in the Bible, but we all know RT won’t think of that shit, and even then it’s simple enough that you don’t have to go into theological discussion).
That’s simple enough, right?