I think Option<T> is an overrated construct when it's not a monad. The whole value is being able to write a chain of operations

    myobj.dothing(x).otherthing(y)

Without having to check the intermediate results. When it's just a tagged union you end up having to check for null everywhere anyway. It's better than "untyped" null because it can't pop up anywhere but it's not super ergonomic. I think Nullable where the Option is implicit does it better.