In Star Trek: Discovery season 5, episode 5, “Mirrors”, Detmer and Owosekun were assigned to pilot the Mirror Universe’s ISS Enterprise to Federation HQ by Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green). This explained Detmer and Owo’s absence for the rest of Discovery season 5.
However, Detmer and Owo do appear in Star Trek: Discovery’s epilogue scene, and they were a sight for sore eyes.
These two had the misfortune of being in the grey zone between background and supporting characters. It’s fine for a show not to focus on the bridge crew (who’s at the helm on the Cerritos?) but Detmer and Owosekun got a raw deal because sometimes it seemed like they were gonna have some character development. Like in season 3 that Detmer had this bizarre beef with Stamets out of nowhere, and that was probably the only episode where she got more than a couple of lines.
I’m not surprised that the actresses chose their other projects (they were probably at the bottom of the totem poll of the show in terms of pay).
I probably wouldn’t have noticed they were missing, but in episode 3 Michael introduced Rayner to the crew and said “You’ll meet Owosekun, Detmer and the rest of the crew in a little bit”, and then later Tilly said “I’ll send Commander Owosekun in”, off screen of course. Lame.
I think it was a worthy experiment - take the nameless, silent extras that populate the bridge on the older shows and give them a little more to do.
But I think it created some unintended and unfortunate audience expectations. Maybe a failed experiment.
I would imagine none of those actors were under contract.