There was definitely a large and vocal part of the community that wanted that, but I think early on there was a lot of tension between Scala being "better Java" and "Haskell for the JVM", and that probably hindered a lot of adoption.
Hmm I was thinking of learning Scala. Good to know it’s on the down trend.
I wouldn’t take these trends too seriously - scala is still huge, and the recent revamp (scala 3) might turn that “trend” around.
Also, learning a language with new idioms is always worth it, regardless of whether you end up using it.