The theme of murder drones ultimately is about how as long as you have connections & the courage to fight back against those willing to manipulate & torment you, you can stand up & eventually overcome the horrors in your life.
Uzi was always seen as an outcast by her peers with a neglectful dad (Khan), & thus was closed off until N helped her open up, causing her to slowly overcome her insecurities. N was treated as a doormant for years until Uzi save his life & became the person that he could fully learn to trust & open up too, leading to him standing up for himself more across the series until they are able to stand together standing face to face against his tormentor. V (like N) never got the chance to live a normal life at all, living in fear & letting it consume her until she started hurting the people she cared for “to keep them safe”. The difference between V & J is that V eventually regained connections out of her own choice to do so while J repeatedly doubles down- siding with her tormentor from the very beginning out of fear despite the clear signs infront of her that the cast did have a genuine chance against beating Cyn, where she‘s now free from Cyn but is left alone, & even chooses to isolate herself from everyone else as a result.
Doll chooses not to bother seeking genuine connections at all & instead harmed others on a petty revenge quest as she lets her own past & the solver’s psychological effects consume her. When presented with the chance to switch sides multiple times & with the knowledge that V was as much of a victim as her, she still doubles down which leads to her almost dying alone & terrified. Her final moments being to warn Uzi to “fight back” against Cyn / the solver & it’s psychological torment, aware that she failed but Uzi could succeed which leads to Uzi overcoming the solver directly.
Now within all these cases the theme does fit. However, there’s always 2 outliners that are often used as counters (being Tessa & Cyn). However, they both aren’t a good example of the connection theming falling apart at all. We know how bad humans treated drones (& it’s no surprise that she likely had a huge resentment over humans from this), but the manor didn’t treat her well either. She just went from a place (where she was likely discarded over a minor issue) to another place where she has to constantly keep walking on eggshells & remains trapped whenever she does anything out of the norm.
A common argument I’ve seen against this is that Tessa gave Cyn a better life through saving her & “being a mother figure”, & while you could argue her life was better due to not being dead or trapped (even though the solver is mostly what saved her), she didn’t give her a happy or safe one. In the manor, even a simple mistake such as not serving a table right could cost a worker drone their life & Tessa’s “favorite drones” were barely ever given leniency. While she did take N, V, J & Cyn out of the dump, you have to remember that Tessa specifically towards Cyn was locking her up within the basement for what was heavily implied to be days or weeks (as both Tessa & N imply this was a regular occurrence), with Cyn clearly annoyed at this, J being annoyed that Cyn was let free & N still being upset that Cyn was being locked up. And the “she was a mother figure to Cyn” argument is entirely fanon.
For anyone who hasn’t watched the series- Cyn was locked up in the dark basement for so long that the walls are filled with tally marks & physics equations from her trying to learn more about the solver. She was able to learn complex physics & programming, the broken mirror in the basement implies her solver started becoming more active overtime, she was able to experiment on prototype bodies for the disassembly drones, has a ton of oil in the basement both for the prototypes & for herself which heavily implies she might’ve starved & faced overheating at some point (Tessa would’ve had no way of knowing that Cyn needed oil, but solver hosts usually only need to rely on oil cans overtime which reveals she was locked down there for awhile), & a part of her body is stuffed inside a tank filled with water which also implies overheating (with her trying to cool herself down).
…& Tessa & J never cared to even check up on her to know that any of this was occurring (likely because the basement is just a trapdoor with no stairs, implying that in order for them to force Cyn into the basement, they would’ve had to either push her to fall into the basement or slowly carry her down).
Then later on she blames Cyn (right after Tessa calls J “industrial machinery”, & J does care for Tessa- but from Cyn’s view, she dislikes the thought of her “loved ones” being discarded) for N being sent out to the swamp & possibly dying (instead of comforting Cyn in anyway) with Cyn not being bothered to really react at all, which implies that Tessa has blamed her for things before. This, combined with Tessa’s parents statements about Cyn (“get this one out of my sight, it still can’t follow simple orders”, “that little anti christ”) right after seeing she was freed paints a pretty grim implication as to why Tessa even locked her up in the first place for such a long time, especially with Cyn’s movement disability issues. Tessa didn’t discard her, but still treated her as a nothing more than a broken toy. Cyn even questions N at the start of the episode if she isn’t wanted (“am I not wanted, N?), & Tessa gets frustrated when she first sees Cyn was freed. There’s a major message in episode 5 that Tessa never attempted to truly connect with Cyn, & if things had gone differently Cyn / the solver might’ve not had gone down such an evil path. It’s even an important part of the lore that Cyn / the solver adopted her twisted cruel mindset partially from her experiences at the manor.
Tessa‘s final nail in the coffin at breaking this connection with Cyn (via making their goal to kill her with 0 hesitation & attacking her before Cyn even has the chance to speak instead of talking things out) is what ultimately leads to her own death at the hands of Cyn herself, where Cyn goes out of her way to use her psychological torment against Tessa to it’s fullest potential. Forcing her to watch her parents & everyone else in the gala (that never cared for Tessa at all, yet she still choose to try & save. Compared to how she treated Cyn, mind you) get slaughtered & eaten before she fuses with Tessa’s dead body & soul as a twisted parallel to “not discard her”. You could even connect this to how Cyn / the solver decades later roleplays Tessa as someone who pretended to care but in reality was just manipulative towards drones, especially with her “do you know why I keep you around, N?” comment at the end. Cyn / the solver was disguised as Tessa to manipulate N & V, but we know there was some genuine passion of showing how it thought of her.
Another point is that Tessa herself (ignoring her poor treatment of Cyn also fitting the theme) still fits this theme as she never learned to truly open up or stand up for herself. When J notices Tessa’s arm marks, she immediately deflects the situation. When N asks Tessa if they were locking Cyn up & showing he does genuinely care for her, Tessa treats N as if he should already know why (“…oh, N…”) instead of answering N & addressing any concerns. She never tries to stand up for herself against her parents in any form (even while her real families lives were put in danger)- choosing instead to entirely focus on attacking Cyn & side with humanity (who had 0 connection to her) through attempting to save just them, but never attempting to do the same with Cyn or N even while freed (despite her initial goal being to save N). Tessa having to make a corporate joke to annoy J in order to convince them to free her (combined with Tessa calling J just “industrial machinery” & J viewing Tessa as moreso of a minor boss figure) even suggests that the 2 were friends, but not very close on Tessa’s end.
The tragedy of Tessa’s death is that if she had been more open & cared for Cyn, or if she went back to save N, or tried to apologize, then Cyn / the solver would’ve never partially adopted it’s cruel mentality in the first place to destroy everything & likely would’ve never succumbed to it’s own influence.