I never got the vitriol on guest characters in NRS games. Star wars characters in SC or FF emo in tekken is some eyebrow raising shit, horror/action movie characters and homocidal comic book maniacs work great in an MK game, and whatever you think about the rest of the MK games, their dedication to characters has become top notch. Both in visual/gameplay execution and things like intro lines.
So yeah, clearly I think this list is a pretty good fit guest wise. They're all well known, they'll all fit, and they'll all attract more casual attention which is nice because it hopefully means this won't be the final DLC list.
As for MK comebacks the only real surprise to me is that none of these characters were main roster given they're almost all very popular, very unique, and haven't been seen since MK 9. I love reptile/rain/meelina/sekto/cyrax, but I've seen what they can do with them. I'd like to see what they can do with the rest, even if they aren't characters i might play (hard to say since they've done such a good job lately of making them a lot more interesting).
I will say i'm also surprised at no 3D era. I've gone over it before in that while a LOT of the designs are terrible, that's mostly because of their awful execution back then. I may not want some of the more generic ones, but there's a lot of decent concepts there that i'd love to see their current teams take a stab at reimagining. Havik, hotaru, Ashara, mavado, nitara, and yes maybe even hsu hao all spring to mind as potentially interesting editions handled with their current flair
