- A shell is not a terminal.
- Rc it's simpler than sh.
- You can totally put shells under graphical windows as in 9front
- You can do a better Unix than Unix itself while ditching out for good the VT220 interface
- Serial terminals aren't a thing under rio(9)
The core concept of Unix weren't the terminals, but text, pipes and the orthogonal composability. rc under 9front doesn't need a terminal emulating some DEC hardware crudely. You get a shell not bound to sizes. Scripts run in the same way, but with superior editing capabilities.
Atuin Desktop might be something of interest for you.