It is very telling that they decided to end the show with "I am the dirt under your nails".
vi got colonised tbh. it gives me that feeling when a rich white old man gets with a young SEA lady, brings her to britain and she only gets to see her family through facetime, and that's also the only time she speaks her native language because her man refuses to learn it
cait basically erased vi's identity as a zaunite. she loved vi in spite of that, instead of as a part of her. like how she told vi that she's not like the other zaunites, and saying 'i thought you were one of us' fully expecting her to step away from her people.
vi's been assimilated into piltover, even going against her own ideals by becoming part of the people (enforcers) who killed her parents, who were responsible for executing the systematic oppression of zaun. yet caitlyn's never assimilated into zaun, never even stepping foot into zaun beyond the first caitvi meeting and later when she was gassing the citizens. the show ended with vi living with caitlyn in the top 1% of piltover; no mutual exchange of culture. caitlyn never had to change her mind about zaun the way vi changed her mind about piltover, and remained oblivious to her own privilege and her family's legacy on zaun.
it's just that the sacrifices vi has made for cait, on her identity and on a moral level, has been completely one-sided. this, the imbalanced power dynamic and caitlyn's subtle prejudice against zaun (*) have never been acknowledged in the show. so for them to get back together and have their happy ending without some sort of introspective reflection feels. very uncomfortable. feels like cognitive dissonance.
(*) i say subtle because other than the warcrimes moment, cait often voices her opposition to extreme measures against zaun. however, she supports 'no extreme measures' and 'they are people too' as normative ideas, not really having the ability to recognise the violation of these ideas when it's in front of her and especially not when she's the one violating them. there's constantly an undercurrent of subconscious prejudice in her attitude towards zaunites, and just, a real lack of understanding