Moving away from the main topic for a second (since that's way too much typing for me at this hour
) thought I'd pull back to an earlier episode in a sense.
We saw that episode about the seven deadly sins. Houtarou thought to himself that thinking he can know Chitanda's heart would be suffering from pride and that he needs to be careful. Also ties into how Chitanda talked about needing some balance since if you have no pride it means you have no self-confidence. Houtarou suffered more here because he doesn't have a great deal of self-confidence. Was inflated by Irisu's manipulation and suffered. Could also look at it because he thought he understood Irisu's intentions and instead was played.
Suppose in the end not sure what I'm saying though. Was he too prideful in being able to read people that he got tricked by a side of Irisu he didn't know about or was his lack of self-confidence the reason he could be tricked like that? Maybe it was just the wrong combination of pride and self-confidence.
Regardless of Irisu it sucks how this all turned out for Houtarou. Roped into things and used for the sake of a poorly acted movie.