[C3E78] Am I crazy or is everyone MASSIVELY overreacting to this shard stuff?

EDIT: To be clear, I mean the player characters.

I want to watch the C3 finale live so I've been catching up by reading episode summaries on the Wiki and watching parts of the episode if there's a scene I actually want to watch. I'm at episode 78, and it feels like the characters are massively overreacting to Ashton trying to consume the shard.

For one, at the end of episode 77 Matt says something along the lines of "Ashton is now an unprecedented creature in Exandria", just for him to make Ashton spit the shard back up within minutes of the next episode? Why? What was the point of even having him succeed? As a DM this irked me but I can look past it.

What I can't get over is how utterly unhinged everyone's response is? Like Fearne has an episode, Chetney tells him to leave, and Laudna just degenerates. This whole "He betrayed us...." thing is extremely baffling to me. They signed off on Fearne and Fearne signed off on Ashton. If anything I would be expecting Fearne to come to his defense. I don't know, I feel like there's some piece of the puzzle that I'm missing to make all of this make sense.