When you think about it, asking people to not think of Grian as a Watcher in Hermitcraft is a lost cause.
In Life Series, he's saved by everyone zooming on the very tragic yaoi of desert duo (good for him), and Martyn somehow got the totem of lore and ran with it, leaving Grian free of most of it.
But Hermitcraft? First, there was a huge taboo on shipping in the fandom at one point, preventing the fanbase to fixate on a particular ship. Second,nothing bad happens in the server. Sure, some storylines can be stretched for angst purposes, but nothing actually angsty is going on, like in the dsmp back in the days. They're so friendly that even Mumbo's treason of the STAR team didn't sprout angsty fics.
Hermitcraft itself, because its a genuinely wholesome server, doesn't generate lore angsty enough for our little hearts' content, so people naturally dig into the hermits' history, into their "origin stories" before they arrived on Hermitcraft.
What did he think would happen when people realised he had canonically disappeared at the end of his previous SMP, right before his arrival to Hermitcraft? After going to fight a cult of eldritch mysterious entities tormenting him? A cult with a cool symbol and aesthetic? Moreover, we don't canonically know what really happened to him. The only thing we know is he disappeared (pearl Evo pov). And then, next thing we know, he reappears on Hermitcraft, reuniting with his buddy Mumbo and doesn't talk about EVO at all?
There is no way the fandom craze of Watcher!Grian in Hermitcraft wasn't predictable. I'm sorry.