Well, the real gainers aside from #1 to #2 are the whales. The scheme of PoS is really for them, the rich folks, and they'll be richer than ever because of it.
You are right the whales are the biggest gainers as the power to control the network have been handed over to the ethereum holder who stakes the balance of the pool to process transaction, there is one strong limitation to the proof of stake consensus which is the ability of the highest ethereum holders to control the process of transaction processing in the network. There is a fact that proof of stake will less the energy consumption by the ethereum holders and aside from this I don't see much advantage the merge has over proof of work and if we must view it closely the proof of stake favors the big bag holder who can afford to lock their funds in the staking pool for a long time and giving them the power to control the network.