I'm not sure if linking to a talk from 2018 in 2022 for a project that is being actively worked on (a bunch of Python abstractions for xcom were added in 2.0) is fair.
Yes, curious if the Taskflow API introduced as part of Airflow 2.0 reduces this pain. It appears much easier/saner than working with XCOMs directly - less coupling and removes the need for lots of boilerplate code.