In the Ether shoutout to RWBY, ALL of the outfits make sense:
Chase as Jaune because both are team leaders, and are the "weakest" (Chase as a cripple and Jaune as a novice warrior) of their respective teams.
Val as Ren. Given that Ren is based on Hua Mulan, it's rather fitting for a genderfluid character.
Madrani as Blake because they defected from the Union and the White Fang, respectively. In addition, Blake's parents have Hindi names, and Madrani appears to have an Indian heritage.
It's far more likely she's meant to be Irooni (like her voice actress). Especially given the Farsi sprinkled here and there.
Kazu as Sun because both tend to act with more independence.
Cammie as Ruby because both are the youngest. Bonus points for hers being the only one wearing the volumes 1-3 outfit of their character, as opposed to volumes 4-6, showing both her inexperience and foreshadowing a traumatic change in her future.
If you think about it, the same mental resilience and adaptability that made the heroes gen:LOCK compatible arguably made them who they are in the first place.
Kazu is a bad soldier because he's too independent of thought, following orders only selectively. He's also apparently a good cook and guitarist, suggesting no absence of creative ability.
Yasamin defected from the Union after realizing it wasn't "her" Union; she's enough of an independent thinker and decision-maker to see past propaganda, re-assess her worldview and make a highly consequential choice.
Cammie is a passionate gamer (requiring quick thinking, improvisation skills and good hand/eye coordination) and an expert hacker (requiring a good grasp of logic and code).
Val/entina has fully embraced their genderfluidity, transitioning back and forth whenever they particularly feel the urge - with all the mental shifts that entails.
Julian is an ace pilot, with excellent reflexes and the ability to make snap decisions. He, too, has a history of defying authority, entering a fraternizing relationship (if not against regulations, still likely frowned upon) and disobeying orders outright during the Battle of New York.
Kazu being the one who has trouble realizing that Val/entina is genderfluid makes sense because he's the only one of the five who uses a translator. Even the best translators have difficulty with nuance, and it clears up after Cammie gives him the term "genderfluid", a dictionary definition that has the best chance of being translated properly.
Additionally, Kazu comes from East Asia, which is a region that has rather conservative attitudes towards the LGBT community. It makes sense for him to not be familiar with some of the more "niche" concepts such as gender fluidity.
Yaz's digital avatar having long hair and a hijab makes sense. She probably prefers it that way, but cuts her hair and doesn't wear headscarves out of practicality because both are easy to grab in a fight, obviously not a problem in the Ether.
Fridge Hilarity: in its second appearance, Nemesis uses the Smoke it carries with it to block line-of-sight, preventing Val/entina from getting a clear shot. It's a literal Smokescreen.
Cammie's Holon and theme color of green has a symbolic pun, someone in the military who is new and inexperienced is referred to as being green, which definitely describes Cammie compared to the other gen:LOCK pilots.
The opening sequence shows that in-keeping with Cammie's rabbit theme, her Holon is at some point going to get a pair of huge rabbit ears. Now, you may have wondered why and/or how bunny ears would be authorised on a military mecha but there's actually a really good reason for it. Since Cammie has complained on several occasions that she's off-balance because of the relatively long Holon legs, adding the ears is actually a pretty easy and effective way to lower her centre of gravity, especially since Migas stated that it would be really difficult to adjust her legs. Physics for the win!
When it actually happens, it coincides with a redesign to her holon's legs, solving the center of gravity problem on its own, but the ears still serve a purpose. The upgrade that adds the ears also turns Cammie's Holon into a Drone Deployer. The ears twitch when the drones broadcast info, indicating that they function as stylized signal receivers (and probably broadcasters too).
Episode 6 gives us the team's new callsigns; Chaser (Chase), Huma (Yas), Trixx (Cammie), Shogun (Kazu) and Wraith (Val). Obviously, Chaser is just Chase's old callsign and is a play on his name, but the others all have significance as well, with Wraith (the stealthy sniper) and Shogun (the frontline berserk warrior) being the most obvious. Yasamin's Huma is a reference to a phoenix-like bird of Persian myth, said to never alight upon the ground, that can't be captured and embodies both male and female aspects; Yaz is a former Union member of Iranian descent who defected and was "reborn" due to the gen:LOCK program, and she mentioned in her dream that she was naked but missing certain... parts, a possible reference to being androgynous or having a dual nature. Cammie's Trixx could be a reference to either Trixx Sapphire, a software program used to overclock hardware, and/or the character Trixx from Miraculous Ladybug, who has a similar appearance to Cammies own pet Nugget. A perfect name for a hacker who reads manga and has a pet robo-fox.
Or Trixx is a reference to the Trix Rabbit (and she's the youngest of the gL crew - 'Trix are for kids').
During the evacuation from the Anvil, a camera angle briefly shows all three Chases - Julian in his tank, Nemesis and Chaser - arranged to form a downward-pointing equilateral triangle, the symbol for gen:LOCK.
Early on Dr. Weller complains about being asked to do too many things at once by saying "I can't clone myself! Believe me, I've tried." Several episodes later we find out he tried to clone his brain into Caliban, but was only able to clone a little bit of it.
This also explains why Nemesis is so unstable. It's at least a second-generation copy of the original Chase the Union stole. Each successive copying leads to more and more instability.
Of course Chase was able to drag even important information like the nanotech access codes out of Nemesis; as was pointed out in "It Never Rains...", the gen:LOCK system is designed to make information-sharing as easy as possible. The same weakness that let Nemesis listen in on the team rendered him vulnerable to a mental counterattack.
The Freeze-Frame Bonus reports that tip the Vanguard off that the spy isn't the real Sinclair are also Foreshadowing that the real Sinclair isn't dead and is in enemy territory - the report states that an 'unknown body' was found in his residence, and that he failed to report 72 hours prior to the spy arriving at the Anvil. If the body had been Sinclair's, they should have been able to identify him, which means the attempted Kill and Replace was a two-man job. One individual has their appearance and voice altered to be able to pass themselves off as Sinclair, the other kills the real deal. Except Sinclair obviously managed to fight off his attacker. As for how he wound up in enemy territory? He stole his assailant's equipment, disguising himself as the enemy in order to stay under the radar, but was unable to get away before he wound up deep in Union-occupied space.
Dealing with the Smoke is an issue that's likely to have a ton of Polity scientists assigned to it. Dr. Weller, of all people, being the one to have developed the solution initially seems like an example of The Main Characters Do Everything. However, Weller, and his team at the Anvil, almost certainly had access to the rare key component, a Union IFF chip; Fake!Sinclair had to have had one with him to control his personal swarm. Ironically, by sending their spy to obtain the Vanguard's special weapon, the Union may well have handed their enemy the key to their own weapon.
Val has the most mindshares of any of the gen:LOCK team, and initiates most of them. As a genderfluid person currently switching from female to male, there's no fear of losing identity through change as there is with the others.
Kazu instantly catching the "baseball" in episode 3 Chase throws, as Japan and the US share the same national sport, Baseball.
The fact the Nemesis is more powerful than the Holons aside from its physical advantages has a subtle explanation. In the last episode of Season 1, after being permanently locked in his Holon, Chase realizes that since he lacks uptime limitations now he can fully max his mods and enhancements without any negative costs. It's equally likely that Nemesis had the same done to it.
In the Season 1 finale, Chase light-heartedly claims that his plan to lure Nemesis to their location is to "call him funny names", but the actual telepathic Breaking Speech he gives to Nemesis is far more dramatic than that. Among other things, Chase calls Nemesis a Union slave. It's hard to remember due to how damaged and broken he's become, but what is Nemesis at his core? A Black man from the United States. African-Americans, with damn good reason, take far more offense to the word "slave" than most people do — Chase essentially got Nemesis to come running by making a racist remark toward himself.
Generator Locking (AKA Genlock) is a technique used to synchronize video. A key feature of gen:LOCK is synchronizing people.
Weller is well aware of how dangerous attempting gen:LOCK is to an incompatible individual. Just how many unfortunate candidates got their brains nuked before the ideal neuroplasticity level was discovered?
Additionally, how did he discover that there's a limit to the amount of time you can spend uploaded before it's too dangerous to download back into your body.
The comic reveals that Weller discovered about the uptime limitation because Chase wasn't the first gen:LOCK computable test subject he found — just the first candidate for 'Phase 1' of the program. When Weller was still in the testing phase for the technology he actually has 3 compatible female pilots he was working and testing the Holons out with, but they became too absorbed in the mind sharing aspect of Gen:LOCK and eventually exceeded uptime, leaving Weller to assume they had perished. However, these prior subjects were able to make a sanctuary for themselves inside the Ether to recover and adapt to their new circumstances, becoming the Hive Mind SYCORAX as a result. Given Weller hid the Awful Truth about Nemesis from Chase for his own good, it makes sense he'd be similarly reluctant to discuss his past failures to save the girls, especially because their flashback made it clear that he felt guilty about not being more firm with stopping them going too far with gen:LOCK's potential.
The Union Offensive at the Ether Nexus was extremely light, why? Almost certainly because they knew that such a high-profile target would be the perfect technology to draw out the Holons, and didn't want to commit many resources to what was going to certainly fail. They were never after the Nexus, no, the Union was after a Cyberbrain, indicating that they know enough about the gen:Lock technology to at least know what to look for and where to get it. Given Nemesis is a Holon, it makes sense he knew what to target and gives disturbing implications as to what would have happened to Cammie if Nemesis had successfully abducted her Cyberbrain. Given Nemesis' Clone Degeneration, it's likely the Union is looking for a 'fresh' mind they could start to copy like Nemesis to make mass-produced soldiers, especially since it's implied that Nemesis' damaged state is the result of their experiments to understand Gen:LOCK technology and appropriate it for their own usage. Now they know what they're looking for, they can more efficiently duplicate Cammie or the others and break them to their will.
Whilst physical damage to any part of your holon other than the cyberbrain is reversible, it seems the psychological effects of an injury to your holon's body is every bit as real as if it happened to your actual body. This means that Cammie is now the only person in history who has a full understanding of what it's like to be decapitated. No wonder she's so traumatized in the next episode.
You have the capability of deleting your own memories when you're running on a cyberbrain. As your memories are essential to your personal identity this means that a careless edit could completely change who you are... Even the highly traumatized Cammie has enough presence of mind to realize the obvious danger when she realizes she can just delete the memories of her own decapitation and doesn't go through with it when she gets the chance.
Nemesis's nature as a modified Holon paints a gruesome picture of its creation. It obviously looks almost nothing like a standard Holon, which means it had to be severely modified to add extra limbs, overhaul the eyes, rework the basic structure, and all the other Union tweaks. Now consider that it's been established that Holons have a full sensory suit for their pilots, including touch and pain, and that you can't exactly anesthetize a robot. The pilot mind was trapped in there for the entire process, forced to feel every single cut, weld, and bolt. No wonder he's so off his rocker.
A slightly less horrifying possibility is that the Union removed the cyberbrain before making the modifications and reinserted it after, as the cyberbrains are shown to be removable, of course, this assumes the Union knew it was possible and bothered to do so in the first place. And of course, the finale reveals that nemesis was a copy (of a copy of a copy), meaning that Nemesis was likely created from scratch and the mind copied in later.
Being able to take down a Behemoth should be cause for celebration as it is a giant walking battleship/carrier. But it turns out to be a double edge sword. Taking one down causes it to release a huge cloud of nanite gas killing anyone that is unprotected in the surrounding area. The opening shows two of these monstrosities. Meaning the Union likely has another if not more of them. Each time the Polity takes one down they run the risk of killing their own people along with it.
The Union took Yaz's parents away for being 'intellectuals'. Combine that with the noted Creative Sterility the Union has, their refusal to compromise and that their full name is a reference to the 'Fourth Turning', where individuality is suppressed and reduced (already hinted at with the fact that genderfluid people like Val/entina are targeted), paints a very grim dystopia that the Union is striving towards, with shades of Putting on the Reich.
In the first episode, just after Chase and Yaz' Big Damn Heroes moment when the Vanguard evacuates the area, they just barely avoid the advancing Union forces - including a large carrier ship. In later episodes, it's revealed that this is the ship used to carry Nemesis about, asking the question of what might of happened if the Vanguard had stuck around just a little longer...
