It’s kind of unfortunate they have been leaked because that’s going to drastically change how we look at those two players watching 49. Any episode that the edit implies it’s either one of those two or someone else, we know it’s likely the two that are 50 bound are going a bit deeper into the game.
I totally agree with #1 and also I don’t like that they don’t know the fans’ reactions to them yet. There have been tons of players before who production loved but fans hated. It’s like we’re trusting that production knows what we’ll want to see, but I don’t trust them with that at all. Production doesn’t usually understand what fans want, casting and otherwise. There’s no guarantee that they’ll be good players or likeable characters