Is not intentional. They identify with white male characters and think those are the more interesting characters . Then, they are unable to diferentiate fantasy from reality and think that in the same way that the women in their movies only want to be the “hero’s girlfriend”, real women indentify with the “hero’s girlfriend” and want to be them. So, in their minds, we were already represented (you can sustitute that for the “black buddy”, same shit for that matter).

Of course, since they see themselves as “woke” the envisioning of the “girlfriend” change through time from the helpless victim to a barely useful to the competent woman who, evertheless need to be rescued after proving her worth. That is part of the fantasy. They are not sexist, they like Strong and intelligent women! see? But they are still the hero and doing the rescuing. And, of course, it is asumed that we would want to be her.

Only after a decade with them saying that “we already have equal representation” and women saying that no, that wasn’t equality and gathering data and plenty of examples, they have been forced to consider that maybe, just maybe, we didn’t have a real hero to identify with.

I’m sure that, for them, they “really, really” mean to create this movie “from the begining” it was just that “it wasn’t the right moment” and “it was difficult to fit in the schedule” (Although they reschedule this movie for latter to make room for Spiderman…) and so on.

And, as in real life, they would have probably convinced themselves that they have always been planed for captain marvel, therefore, it is not cheating to retrofit her in their universe.

Basically, it is not intentional, it is just that for them we are an afterthough.