>>493032048>>493032715> and that was why she was pushed so hard and was replacing us as main character in a weird way. She was literally supposed to be the New Us. You are right about what the plot was doing with her, but wrong about why. Wuk Lamat is doing a WoL speedrun, because all of Dawntrail is a speedrun. The purpose of Dawntrail is to be a *recap episode*.
Look at it from another angle, and you see the metanarrative purpose of Dawntrail clear as day. You know how YoshiP mentioned that he wanted to provide an alternate starting point for people to jump into the game without having to play through the Zodiark saga? The same reason that we got the Codex reminding people who NPCs and shit are? How do you think that actually works? Its really hard to tell a story that has built up as much world-specific lore as FFXIV has without referencing any of it, especially when you are surrounded by characters who were there for it. But you can't reference it without referencing the context of it, and all of that context is the part that these new players would have skipped.
What Dawntrail does, then, is provide alternate points of reference for major characters, story themes, and important lore. Instead of Zenos, you have Zoraal Ja. Instead of the Crystal Tower transported to the First, you have Alexandria coming to Tural. Instead of soul and memory being different things being important to the Exarch's soul crystals, its Alexandria's regulators. It makes up Levinsickness just so that we have an excuse to go over how we cure aetheric imbalance/tempering again. It reintroduces reflections and explains how they work, including time dilation. And so on and so forth.
The purpose of Dawntrail isn't do introduce much thats new, its to recap stuff thats old so that new players are up to speed. And for that, to trace the path of the WoL, we see Wuk Lamat get to be the main character in our stead.
Which is an interesting idea, but was poorly executed.