> Polars biggest downfall is that pandas/matplotlib are so ubiquitous in data science and polars just plays so differently than pandas including using hvplot as its default plotting package, etc.

huh? Polars doesn't have a default plotting package, it's always something you add. matplotlib supports polars out of the box through the dataframe exchange protocol, which is ubiquitous enough due to the proliferation of other dataframe libraries (dask, vaex, modin/ray) that you really get about every other tool in the ecosystem with polars for free.