Why Erenville succeeded as a character where others did not

[Lyth]

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This is a chocobo-and-egg scenario. Are characters popular because we gave them time to develop, or did the writers preferentially develop characters that were popular? It's hard to tell.

Either way, it's probably safe to say that characters like Erenville, Estinien, G'raha, Themis, Hythlodaeus, Ardbert, Krile, and Emet were all incredibly safe bets to invest character development into, based off of prior audience reactions to them. Would we have viewed Wuk Lamat more favorably had she the advantage of attending a few 'bit parts' before her 'starring role'? I can't say for certain.

What I can say is that it's probably safer to test drive a character with the audience in a minor role before committing thousands of lines of dialogue to them. That might come across as me 'throwing some shade' at a really obvious target, but I'd argue that this is just common sense and good business practice.

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I'd say Erenville has a lot in common with Urianger, actually. They're both introverts who are most comfortable outside of their conventional social circles (Urianger and the Loporrits, Erenville and the Punutiy). They're both dragged forcibly out of their respective shells by vociferous extraverts that they have tragic backstories with. Outside of Shadowbringers and Endwalker's Scion party wipe sequences, I don't really think that Urianger is much of a combatant either. Not that we need any more battle nerds in the Warrior of Light's friend circle.

I think the primary value that more introverted characters like these add is in reflection. I personally found WL exhausting, and Erenville by contrast just clicked the right balance in exposition. I'd be more than happy to go on more road trips with him. I don't need a character to be consistently in my face to get value out of them. I'm aware this is very much a personal choice, though, and I'm sure that there are obligate extroverts out there who feel the exact opposite.