Do you think a blog post needs a featured image? Why? Why not?
I don’t think so, it is a quick way to grab attention or comunícate what does that post talks about but it is a pain to maintain. I use to have my blog this way and finding / making the right image became an obstacle to write more.
I would advise to keep it optional.
I’ve been trying to improve my tidiness of my Figma files, is hard when I don’t like to delete variants and if I want to edit something I prefer to do it on a duplicate.
I don’t want to lose something that I may want to re-use one day 🤷🏻♂️