[Kagayaki]

Originally Posted by Snork

was it confirmed already, or is it another speculation?

AFAIK, there’s no official interpretation of the show’s ending, and I doubt there ever will be, so pretty much anything you say about it is your interpretation. I’ll try to explain why I think this one is the only one that makes sense though.

Originally Posted by Snork

if the miasma thing proves true, it means that magical girls themselves keep causing people the same problems they protect them from? That would make Madoka's sacrifice... bitter.

Since Madoka isn't actually omnipotent, the only result of her wish should be precisely what she asked for, in the same way that all the other girls got precisely what they asked for...

Originally Posted by Madoka

I want to erase every witch before they are born. Every witch from every world, from the past and the future, with my own hands.

So the only change in the structure of the universe should be that witches are destroyed before they are born. Accordingly, the fact that the demons now appear must directly result from the lack of witches. Whatever despair the witches fed off still exists, except it accumulates and gives rise to demons.

There are two possible cases here. Despair is either coming from magical girls or not coming from magical girls (or some combination of the two):

1) Humanity as a whole created the despair that fed the witches, so magical girls are fighting to protect humanity from its own evils. They're doing something good here, whether or not they become witches, since if magical girls didn't exist, there would just be demons instead of witches, but there would be nobody to fight them.

2) Despair in the world (and hence the demons) comes from the hope that magical girls create, so magical girls are the source of what they're trying to protect humanity from. Their existence is bad, even if they don't become witches, since if magical girls didn’t exist there would be no demons. This is what I was talking about in the part you quoted.

In both cases, or in any combination of the two, Madoka's wish isn't making magical girls fundamentally better or worse for the world. Unless she got something she didn't wish for, in which case I would agree with Hagoshod that the ending is inconsistent and poorly written.