I have a theory on the Filia thing.
So, a young Alex Ahad, he played Arcana Heart, he played a bunch of Japanese games and watched a bunch of anime that had young teenage protagonists and it just normalized the idea in his brain of having a sexy teenage girl as his heroine. So I'd say that most of the Skullgirls heroines being underage/lolis are just an artifact of the type of media he consumed in high school.
It's clear in his more recent artwork that he still has a fondness for these types of characters but he just doesn't explicitly say it.
The push to censor Skullgirls is a result of its corporitzation, like, it's trying to make it a more palatable product for sponsors and esports and trying to shed its "goonslop" perception. Which, in my opinion, is NEVER going to fucking work. You can't take a game that has this hypersexualized stuff as its DNA and begin trying to genetically modify all that stuff out of it.

Skullgirls needs to be driven by its creator, and it should try to remain a niche product that appeases its core group of fans. If that alienates the tourists and sponsors, so be it, but by trying to appease those people by scraping away the more lascivious bits, I think it's just an effort that is fucking doomed to fail.

SG needs to be back in its creators hands, it needs to be edgy and sexy, and it needs to piss off certain groups people. Like the gacha zoomer retards who are latching onto it like parasites and preventing its flourishing.
Growth and health are two different things. Right now Skullgirls has growth, but it's not healthy. It's growing because it's attracting a number of people who hate everything about its appeal. This HAS to change and the people who own this IP need to realize it.