Well, there's also that Ashley may or may not be retired, Mirai isn't doing the GP (and also may or may not be retired), and Bradie/Karen/Mariah all have two assignments (presumably they didn't want two of these three at the same GP). Those were the only people that beat her at nationals. As noted she beat out others that could've had the spot including Wang, Hicks, Glenn, and all the other Junior Ladies competing Senior at Nationals. With no one above Starr at Nationals who could have that second spot and few (if any) of the other options having competed for the summer when spots were chosen, it was probably easiest to pick by Nationals results.
Also, if they're trying to promote the future, Starr may very well be it. She needs work on her skating quite a bit to be competitive at the Senior ranks, but she does have the potential to be one of the faces of US Figure Skating. Girl is very marketable. She went viral in the past, she has (or almost has) a 3A like Mirai, she's got a fun personality, she chooses unique music and costumes, she performs on the ice, she's pretty, etc. They were already using all those as marketing for Nationals this year, but when she is legitimately in the conversation for the Olympic team I expect USFS to play those talking points up to the media even more.
I think you’re thinking to far ahead. Maybe there is a lot of anxiety about the future of ladies skating so we get treally invested in discussing skaters. But I am still in a wait and see mode with Starr. As far as the future and her marketability, I refuse to discuss it. Four years is a long time.
What I hope we can do is discuss skaters without putting them down. Pickings were slim for SA, so in my opinion she earned her spot. I agree that she needs more work on edge work, cross overs, and her program needs to be developed more. I don’t think she should dump it. It’s too close to the start of the season and it takes months to break in new programs. Instead she should work with her choreographer more to fill in the empty spots. But I think once she’s gotten used to the layout, she’ll start performing it more. My hope is that she competes three more times before SA, just to get more mileage out of her program.