So I haven't read WFA in like, two years? Smth like that. Idk time is hard. But I recently checked back in on it because I needed the name of a character that exists only in WFA (bc fuck Izzy & Riko right?) and I realized something I hadn't noticed before:
At the very least in the early episodes, Duke's character was erased in favor of making him an audience stand-in. He's introduced to the more domestic side of the batfam as the audience is so the audience has someone to relate to. He's not given the agency to be himself because he's being reduced to the point where he's practically a Y/N.
And I think there's an interesting way of doing a "new character introduced to a new environment" thing w/out breaking Duke in the process. You have Damian be that fish out of water. It's already non-canon right? So have an Alternate Universe that's lighter about Damian's character development. But DC is too much of a coward to actually do that because it requires A. Not having an audience character, and B. Because it would mean actually treating all of the al Ghuls with a nuance (which yes. You could do within format and genre) that they're unwilling to provide.












