But what’s the council’s role in all of this, considering they were the ones who created this ritual specifically for the Admin’s goal?
Fair point you bring up. Maybe it'll be a combination of the two ideas. Something like Kirito or Asuna might be under the impression that one of them messed it up, but actually the administrator was always going to hijack it.
This accomplishes the goal of further ruining Kirito's and Asuna's relationship, while also doing whatever weird Administrator shenanigans that are afoot.
But I guess I'm also jumping the gun because the only reason I'm considering Asuna being the one to mess up the ritual is because of the assumption that we might get IRL sex in the in-game Friday. And that assumption makes me further assume that Fujino wants to rush the story. We also thought that Yui shouldn't appear, since it'll make things messy, so something going wrong has kind of been stuck in my head.
Just overall the ritual just feels too weird so it's hard to accurately guess what the purpose of it is.