zlink64, that's an interesting hypothesis. I've seen some gifs recently that highlight some of the parallels between End of Evangelion and Q. One, that I sadly didn't save, shows Misato pulling Shinji by the arm, and then morphs into Asuka doing the same.
And then you have this:
Shinji and Asuka's relationship is greatly reduced in Rebuild compared to NGE and most of the teasing has been removed, so I'm honestly be surprised if they go for this shipping angle this time. There just isn't much foundation there at the moment. Which could change in Final of course!
As for the deaths in Final, I think Anno might pull a fast one on us and have nobody die, save Gendo/Fuyutsuki, or even go a step further, undo some of the deaths in the previous movie, and actually end with a
negative death toll. The Rebuild movies happily tweak the viewer's expectations: Ramiel survives a successful shot and comes back for round 2. Asuka pilots Unit 02 instead of Toji and the Eva grows extra arms to fight Shinji, Zeruel eats Rei, who doesn't actually die. The whole 3.0 preview. Kaworu's death was played straight unless you were expecting him survive.
Most people are predicting an End of Evangelion-level blood bath where Anno channels his inner Tomino and takes a hatchet to the cast, so maybe he won't. In fact, that already happened, albeit with secondary characters. Maybe now he'll show us how the world recovers from that kind of devastation.
Fuyutsuki said rebuilding the world is difficult, he didn't say you couldn't do it!