It was the 90s, long term story telling was still a new thing, and introducing a plot thread without a clear idea of how to resolve a plot was very common.
In other words, bad writing.
In aviation, there is a saying, "Plan your flight then fly your plan". In literature, there are the planners and the pantsers, the latter who "fly by the seat of their pants" without knowing where they are going. You can see signs of this in "Oliver Twist" where the story seems to be two concatenated stories, to the detriment of continuity, to be expected because it was originally written as a serial for a newspaper. If you want to impress me with skills that would be useful in writing, show me your PMP (Program Management Professional) diploma or a degree in systems engineering or structural engineering. This shows an understanding of planning and plotting and basing elements of a story on a pre-agreed concept. A degree in Literature is not as useful because it is just a degree in watching someone else work. I know I am going to get dumped on from a great height for saying that but there are players and spectators in any industry and if you are writing, you are a player. If you are watching or reading, you are a spectator. Spectators do not necessarily have the skills of the player. The player always has the skills of the spectator.
I recognize that when you have a stable of writers, it is difficult to assign someone to episode 2 and 3 of an arc before episode 1 has been written, so you tend to get continuity errors unless the concept happens at the beginning of a season before anyone puts any words on paper and this is usually not possible unless you get advance knowledge that your are locked into a new season.
Back to Connor, he was introduced because we had all seen plenty of Angel brooding and being an incomplete guy with a long-lost love, no family and nothing of interest happening in his own story. So we get a dalliance with Darla that produces a son. Fortunately, we pass through the "Gee, I'm a dad" phase quickly and this begins to affect the plot. There is some continuity problems between the program and the comics - Qu'ortoth is supposed to be a hell dimension in the program but looks more like Valhalla or the Native American "happy hunting ground" in the comics. I would have more fear of trekking through Australia than Qu'ortoth because you are not the apex predator there. After all, the band Oz was in (Dingoes Ate My Baby) was based on a believable event. Demons never ate Connor.
