Was it a worthy successor?

No and I'll make the same point many others have made on this board including Rider most recently:
The show wasn't that deep.
Where BMW and GMW differ is the channels they resided on. BMW was part of the famous TGIF block which had family friendly shows but mature. Ie anyone from kids to teens to adults could watch the entire block of shows. This allowed the writers to touch on some deep topics. From the professor that hit on Topanga, to school gangs to the cult that recruited Shawn. It got very deep and touched some great topics without being too preachy and skewing too old.

GMW was handicapped by Disney and a lot of us knew this would happen from the beginning. Disney is a kid channel and apparently these days kids cannot deal with tough subject matter. Thus a tough topic like school bullying was a joke on GMW but was more real on a show like Degrassi for instance. Like Rider said the show was not given the space to dig past the surface at all. The triangle could've been good had there been real consequences for the friendship with Riley and Maya. Instead we got awkward plots that dragged the triangle out until the resolution which was just ridiculous by that point.

So the topics they wanted to do? Had potential for some great storytelling. Unfortunately they were on Disney and that limited their abilities