There have been signs that the Historical characters are going to get a refresh this year - from listing of new books for Julie, the shrinking of current Historical collections, among other things. But I also realized something that makes a 2024 Historical Character refresh likely...
In 2014, the Historical Characters were rebranded to BeForever.
In 2019, the Historical branding was restored, new book formatting was introduced, and the collections of the core Historicals at the time (Kaya, Rebecca, Nanea, Maryellen, Melody and Julie) were refreshed and given new items.
Since so many new historicals have been released since 2019, as well as there being less items for the older ones, I believe a refresh is imminent if AG wants to release more Historicals in the future. American Girl's current core historicals, if we are to guess from the American Girl Live in Concert musical (which 2018-19's AG Live mostly predicted), are Claudie, Melody, Julie, Courtney and Nicki/Isabel.
This leaves one to be kept in the core line of products, and if I am going to take a wild guess, it's either going to be Kaya or Nanea. American Girl usually doesn't like to take dolls of color or different religions out of the core lineup until they introduce a new historical character of a similar background. For example, Addy was cubed around the same time Melody released, and Rebecca's collection started dwindling around the time Isabel and Nicki released. However, this rule can also work with Girls of the Year, as Josefina was cubed during Luciana's availability. However, so far I haven't heard of any new Native American historicals or Asian/Pacific Islander historicals being in the works, so my guess is that Nanea will be kept, as she is newer, and AG might release a new Native American character in the future.
What do you think?