I'm going to ignore the part you said about macho and abs because I think you're being silly.
Because I was.
Yes, let's pull statistics out of our asses. That'll sure help the argument.
To be fair I haven't exactly gone
looking for this kind of data -- there's no way I care about Grant that much to subject myself to that kind of homework. But going all the way back to my early days on the Castlevania Anti-Chapel forums, I can't ever recall Grant being popular or even
talked about all that much until they made the animated series. And the reason I bring that up is because it represents, to me at least, a discrepancy.
Here's a character fans were largely happy to forget until very suddenly, they weren't.
And I don't get it.
I suppose it'd be the same if they made he series and didn't add Sypha or Alucard.
But this is
measurably not the case.
Sypha and Alucard have
huge effects on the post-game story. Sypha goes off with Trevor and continues the Belmont and Belnades lineage -- essentially none of the post-Trevor Belmonts exist without her, and depending on exact lineage, Yoko might not either. Alucard later reawakens in Symphony of the Night and becomes a major mover and shaker of the plot. These characters are hugely important -- there's a distinct "before" and "after" in the chronology with them, and cutting either of them produces
massive internal inconsistencies in the plot of the series.
Grant... kind of vanishes. Neither he or his descendants really have any major role to play after 1476. Maybe the plots of a light novel here or there could possibly be affected, but nothing in the main series changes with or without him. I mean, the only time he's even referenced in dialog is when Trevor comments to Hector that, yes he killed Dracula "but I did not do so alone." That's not exactly the legacy of a super-important character.
So cutting him is not really the same as cutting Sypha or Alucard.
I definitely hope to see him too, or at least his boss fight and resultant healing from Dracula's Curse, but I think the idea of
Regardless of what they are doing with Grant they certainly want to keep it under wraps until the series drops or some big reveal.
really just isn't actually the case. I think Grant's overall role has simply been reduced to the lowest amount permissible under canon to achieve focus balance between the main characters because Season 2 is still rather short at only 4-ish hours and we already have three protagonists. If the series has any plans to show what Hector was doing in this period in detail (and let's be fully honest, it very well may not), that would push things to 3 main protagonists and 1 secondary protagonist in four hours of runtime without Grant being there, and already we begin losing the gift of pacing and focus. So I can't imagine Warren Ellis putting any more focus on Grant than is strictly required.
Which is a shame, but again, Grant is kind of the illegitimate son of Castlevania 3 -- he's there and should be acknowledged, but he's gonna be left out of the family pedigree the moment push comes to shove.
And I still don't understand all this anticipatory squirming of "OOH I WONDER WHY THEY'RE KEEPING GRANT
SECRET?!"