The big bad is so big and so bad so quickly that I don’t know if NEXT is sustainable as a villain, and that’s tricky when the show is literally called Next.
NEXT seems like it couldn’t get much more powerful, so they need to defeat the AI sooner rather than later.
They can’t not defeat NEXT, because technology is everywhere.
Short of the show delivering a twist of everybody moving to an off-the-grid life in the woods somewhere, Next may not be able to stretch its story.