Ewan also could have had some other project scheduled between the end of principal photography and the eventual reshoots months later.
Just seems weird that he wouldn’t just keep the beard/plan to grow it back out in time.
His beard in the movie isn’t even that long.
Glad I grew up (21) with AotC on VHS and I couldn’t tell that the beard was fake in some shots.
Then again it looks fine to me even now, since the the beard and the fake beard alternate so much, even within a scene. It’s less jarring than if he, say, had the real one for first half the movie then had the fake one for the second half.