Matter of fact, I think it’s either mentioned or implied that she had a past relationship with one of the male characters in the movie?

You are right. She had a male ex-fiance, was shown to be into the guy on the boat and a group of guys in Sicily.

I never got the sense that she was going to be taking up the mantle. I made a post about it here but was downvoted quite a bit, with people telling me that it was “heavily implied” that she was intended to replace Indy through marketing and behind the scenes comments, but I guess I missed all that. 🤷🏼‍♂️

You didn’t miss anything - you were 100% right. The marketing focused on Indy - the first trailer, Helena was hardly in it. She had one shot, I think.

But we don’t let pesky facts get in the way of our outrage, these days.

Helena was checking out guys multiple times in the film.