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In aggregate this looks like a godsend, but there are some examples (like foo?.:method) that looks atrocious.

Yeah, "?." as safe navigation operator even in JS where it already exists is eye-sore. They could use some other single character instead of two characters. Question mark is already doing a lot with ternaries etc.

Instead of obj?.:method?.(…) it would be like obj#:method#(…)

Replace # with your favorite extra character instead of questionmark.

Is there any reason why they're not considering a single '?' like rust? Is it a parsing issue?

So you'd have: obj?:method(…)

Mike Pall wrote in the issue that it's easier to parse. If they get rid of the ternary operator, I'll ask him again to drop the period.

a lone ? can mean anything, you can already tell that . is for fetching a subtable.

In C# it's not a lone ?, it's two operators: ?. and ?[

Lua could have ?. ?[ ?" ?{ and ?(

I'd rather it use ?.() the . means getkey, () means expression using .(expr) should be the same as array[], throwing ? as a character should be very obvious what it does.

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