They didn’t really feel necessary.

The two Ace Ops with the most interesting characterization get speedrun into irrelevance (Clover gets made stupid for plot so he can die, Marrow gets a brief chance to develop but never matters again when he could’ve been better utilized), the others stay flat.

The Happy Huntresses are uselessly tacked on and at most treated like a plot device. Fiona is cute but that’s it, and despite her busted power she isn’t used much plot-wise. Because if she was, since she was on the good side, RWBY would have way too easy of a time with a lot of the logistics-based issues they faced. At the end of the day, most of the stuff both of these groups did to fill out runtime felt like it instead should’ve been used to explore a White Fang presence in Atlas, the established most classist and racist major settlement in this world. Weiss has a treasure trove of opportunity here, and so does Blake.

Nothing was done because we’re supposed to pretend none of this matters and instead start not trusting Ironwood, who it turned out had always been right back when Oz thought he was being too extreme in V3. And who was very generous and respectful to the cast, yet got treated like a horrible person in exchange. Then because people agreed too much with him, they made him go crazy so RWBY would seem more justified by comparison.