Speed-Optimize Laravel Datatable

My Laravel 8 product list (jQuery DataTable) crawls to a halt—loading 1.1 million+ rows can take up to four minutes and sometimes freezes the browser. I suspect the main culprit is the MySQL query rather than images, even though each row also displays three thumbnails.

Here’s what I need right now:
• Inspect the current Eloquent / query-builder call and pinpoint bottlenecks.
• Apply quick wins—proper indexing is already in place, but the query may still need refactoring, eager-loading, or pagination tweaks.
• Review how images are fetched and make sure they aren’t blocking or over-fetching.
• Deliver a concise summary of the changes plus the patched code so I can drop it straight back into production.

This is a small, urgent fix on a very tight budget, so please bid only if you can start immediately and are confident with Laravel 8, MySQL optimisation, and jQuery DataTables.