The point is that wherever that happens, it's an obvious flaw with the method returning the null, and can also be caught by static analysis. It means that in general, the problem is avoided.

Yes, it's not ideal, it's still a flaw that should be caught at compile-time, but it's not a big real-world problem, as returning null by accident instead of an option is a pretty rare bug.

The much more common bug (you didn't realize no return value was a case), the Option is a good counter to.

No, it's not a perfect solution, but it's not useless either.