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Terminals are interesting vs the history of our industry. AFAIK the VT52 was a random logic design (as is this reproduction), while it's successor VT100 had a CPU. Terminals were one of the driving applications for microprocessors. The PC is essentially someone noticing that the terminal now has a useful CPU in it and asking why not run applications on it?

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Somewhat "random" in that it doesn't use an off the shelf part, yes. It does implement its own processor which execute 8 bits wide "microcode" out of a ROM.

Yeah, the vt52 had a very primitive special purpose processor. The ADM-3A (which is even simpler) was in fact implemented with off-the-shelf ttl chips and sram (but only had escapes for cursor position, and clear whole screen).

Given the HDL languages and cheap FPGAs we have today it is possible to do more with just FSMs and the icluded RAM/ROM, compared to using individual ttl/cmos parts and designing a PCB. I mean you could do a VT100 compatible if you really wanted, but doing it with an 8 bit micro is way easier to write & debug (and extend!).

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