That if the creator is seeding paid torrents, there is no middle man (Apple) to collect a fee.

Maybe, just maybe, the middleman is adding some value? Otherwise creators would have skipped the middleman a long time ago?

Also, how is the money getting to the creator exactly?

My guess is a middleman like Apple isn't necessarily a problem if the content were DRM free. It's the sword dangling overhead which may invalidate ones license without reimbursement, or limit access arbitrarily that is burdensome.

When I downloaded a movie from Netflix I couldn't watch it on vacation because of region locking.

Region locking is typically do to contracts with the content creators, actors, etc. typically has nothing to do with the middleman. DRM isn’t much different, the content creators often demand/expect it.

P.s. I’ve worked in this space.

While true the middlemen often are more visible than rights holders. And some are big enough to push back on DRM as Apple did with music.

Probably minus the "through Apple" part. If that's not your thing, there's lots of independent content on youtube, podcasts, etc that are member-supported via patreon and its alternatives. Shame that isn't available for all the mainstream stuff too, but maybe things will move in that direction.

I pay far more for the content I get on Patreon than the content from the big providers. Curious why that is, maybe it’s content that lacks broad appeal, and content that has broad appeal works better on the platforms?

You can't buy episodes of a series(or even the entire season in a lot of places.