Yeah, but the replacement character meant their conversation had zero stakes. It made it the main off-note in arguably the best, and certainly the last good, episode of the final season before the treading water train wreck of the last 15 episodes or so.

And while it's fair enough that a group sees "their" kind's portrayal a certain way, and outsiders don't think what that's like for them, the reverse is true. Black people and gay people don't know what it's like for the majority, either. Not having an interest in campaigning for civil rights in an era of de jure equality and de facto minority privilege is made out to be the equivalent of being a plantation owner's offspring. Meanwhile, among people not informed about social justice & politically correct positions, the perception of media portrayal is the reverse. I remember years ago, when I used to read Wizard magazine for the cartoons & caption jokes, I saw an ad for a new comic book series about a superhero team called "Thunderbolts" and it took me a while to figure out what bothering me: every member of the team with visible skin was white. I was, of course, not offended, merely surprised that any mainstream entertainment producer would create a diverse team of six white people. Later on, my view of the world was restored when it turned out that the pictured team were secretly super-villains pretending to be heroes.

Black people talk about their propensity for getting killed off in horror movies (in reality the reason was the opposite of racism; conventional business sense in the era of the first slasher films said that you'd alienate a good chunk of your audience by making the main character or her love interest a black person, and that chunk might be larger than the number who would be hooked, and would almost certainly have more disposable income; and in a horror/slasher movie, almost everyone but the hero dies. Black people died in horror movies, because horror movie producers made a point of hiring black actors for the parts they could afford to give them), but white people also have situations and issues where they will only see a white or male character portrayed in a negative light.

In that light, go back and look at the entirety of the MCU and name me a female character subjected to the pratfalls and other humorous indignities to which Thor is regularly. They spent five movies beating on Thor fans' sensibilities to the point that no one is rioting over his fat suit the way they would if it was Black Panther or War Machine (which, BTW, is another Avengers/Defenders same mix up: Tony Stark is the Marvel face of the military-industrial complex; if ANYONE is to be called "War Machine" it should be he) or Falcon. Black Panther only gets Thor moments in his own movie with its majority black cast, and never when Martin Freeman or Andy Serkis is on the screen. Nebula comes the closest of any female to being subjected to that kind of thing, but only while she's still a villain. Maybe Jane's assistant.

Because both Rey & Danvers are paragons, who require no assistance or education or training, and are stripped of any real growth or conflict because it might be inferred as saying something negative about women if something is shown causing them difficulties or upset. For all the stuff they yanked out of Empire Strikes Back and repainted to make The Last Jedi, what was her equivalent of losing her hand or sweat and work and falling on her ass and failing during her training montages? Did her first lightsaber fight after running away from her training show her enemy toying with her, belittling her skills and delivering a humbling beatdown?
And I have yet to see any negative reactions or MRA push back over that, because they have nothing to go on. Gamora & Nebula's relationship was the next logical character issue due to be addressed for that subset of the franchise. Mantis is still undeveloped and the four male (Groot is presented as such) team members are all slapstick comic relief, with a varying degree of pathos from time to time.
I had the same feeling, but thinking back, she was never really presented with that information. Gamora was the source of the Vormir datum for Nebula & Thanos, and the sacrifice requirement took her by surprise. Nebula's insight that he had killed her didn't require her to know the terms. In fact, it's probably more due to her less-favored child status, whereby her mind leaps right to "Of course, Gamora's death would upset him, she's ALL he cares about..."
Except that is literally the case: it IS a current fashionable trend to mock "male tears" and "not all white people" and to say all people who do not qualify as "allies" are "part of the problem."

There is speaking up for representation, and there is castigating ONE artist or work for not shouldering the burden, instead of depicting what they are interested in or trying to make money. "Telling a story that engages me, or which will attract a large paying audience" is now the equivalent of not just having a "colored section" your restaurant, but of actively promulgating Jim Crow. The people and institutions with which you take up that kind of issue, are the ones at the level where such things pan out. The results of two coin tosses have no effect on a third toss. The representation of Joss Whedon's Avengers doesn't have a lot to do with the Russo brothers' Avengers 4.5, except that it constrains the latter work to a degree, especially when so much of Endgame included deliberate homages to the first one. They are not responsible for the choices Whedon and Jon Favreau and Kenneth Brannagh and Joe Johnston and their screenwriters made (on the other hand, both Johnston's & Favreau's most recent film adaptations show they are not afraid to go with more minority casting than their source materials). Furthermore, Kevin Fiege and his people can only work with what Marvel Comics has given them, and Marvel Comics, in turn, is working off a history and a fanbase attached to said history, much of which was established in a time when it was a struggling publisher at the mercy of the market, in times when standards of representation and American demographics were very different than they are today.

Throughout its history, however, Marvel has been at the forefront of whatever politics were fashionable to call progressive at the time. Steven Attewell has a series of articles on-line called "People's History of the Marvel Universe" in which he shows how the comic book alarmists in the 50s were right left-wing stuff was coded in, even in very early days.

Once I recognized Russo as the gay guy at the meeting (I thought it was an Avengers team affair and it was Mark Ruffalo talking and I was like "Did the Snap make him gay?" ), I felt a bit contemptuous, because it was so obviously pandering, but so weak and tokenish.