Pretty sure that if I somehow re-render the template after setting the session variable used, the drop down will work. It’s not a subscription issue since I tested it with autopublish as well.
Did you check the original <select> after your helper runs?
What bootstrap-select does is hide the original <select> and create its own element using the options given in the original <select>.
You need to $('.selectpicker').selectpicker(); (which read the select>options into the selectpicker) after you change the elements in the <select> (after the helper runs).
the original<select> was reactive. The moment I used selectpicker, the reactivity went away. Meaning that i had to call $('.selectpicker').selectpicker('refresh'); in order to get the data.
I didn’t spend too much time on this as I found select2 to work perfectly out of the box. I proceeded with that. Selectpicker did have some really neat options though.