YMMV / They Both Die At The End

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Are the Heralds callous towards the Deckers due to being Only in It for the Money, as Mateo and Rufus believe, and not knowing what it feels like to be on one's Last Day? Is it merely an appropriate level of professional detachment necessary to do one's job? Or is it simply a coping mechanism to stay sane? The fact that Andrea had dozens of calls on the same shift she called Mateo can speak to her seeing Deckers as nothing more than a means of advancing herself, a heavy workload that necessitates an efficient approach and/or proof of how emotionally draining the job can be if one does not stay detached.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • While Peck's enmity with Rufus is somewhat understandable, he crosses it when he gets a gun and sets out to murder Rufus.
  • Vin crosses it by causing a suicide bombing, taking several Deckers with him.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some of the Death-Cast related stories, from a former U.S. President getting the call and being assassinated by his secret service bodyguard, to a website that encourages Deckers to kill themselves in unique ways, are rather fascinating, but ultimately only serve as background information about Death-Cast rather than being explored in much detail.
• The Woobie: Neither of the leads had easy lives even before getting their Death-Cast calls. Mateo's mother died in childbirth and his father is in a coma, while Rufus lost his entire family in a tragic accident, blaming himself for their deaths. Rufus lives just long enough to suffer the pain of losing Mateo, and dies a little less than two hours later.
• Woobie Family: The Emeterios. Three out of four of the family are killed in a single accident and Rufus, the only survivor, is traumatized.