I’m probably more of a conspiracy theorist than this blog lets on, to be honest, but really? Truly?
I think it’s because they’re female or minority characters that are being used as interchangeable most of the time. And when that’s not the case, it’s because making new characters is like distracting cats with a shiny thing and it detracts attention from the shitty treatment of the characters they were replacing from the beginning.
Angry over Cass’ turn to evil and poor treatment? Want us to actually put effort in fixing here? Look! Stephanie’s back! And now she’s Batgirl! Eggplant! Hope! Waffles!
There’s a hole missing in the DCU’s representation role call for minority women with disabilities? You think Cass would be able to solve that? Look! New mute assassin baby WOC! And it’s an event tie-in!
I should note that I don’t know how deep this goes? Like I don’t think the creators every time are meaningfully distracting from issues by introducing new characters. I’m not saying anything about Scott Snyder for creating Harper Row or Gail Simone for creating Strix.
But I am saying that Snyder reportedly came up with the idea for Harper Row — again, an able bodied, super genius, white-appearing girl — when they wouldn’t let him use Cass in Court of Owls and that it’s worthy of side eying that Batgirl— the title responsible for the vast majority of “reasons Cass can’t exist” and featuring lots of erasure and mental illness witch hunting (again, for what I read of it which was about 15 issues) — made a WOC mute woman assassin-from-birth like Strix when, y’know, a Batgirl once featured all those earmarks.