That way, one of the key weaknesses of her character (“die” > return > die) is removed, but she gives Finn the stronger arc and his (one on-screen) killing of her is a part of his journey towards being able to commit to the Resistance. The change this’d require is her removal from the SKB scenes of TFA.
This^
Thanks for describing what I was thinking, Eddie. While I think Hal should do what he wants, this was a part of my thought process for this suggestion as well.
I understand though that the original option may be necessary in order to remove BB-8’s ATST moment. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie, but would it be possible to cut away after Phasma falls to her death, and then we don’t come back to Finn & Rose until we see them crash land on Crait? Do we really need to see them find a ship and leave the Supremecy?
Also, Hal mentioned something about rotoscoping her out of necessary TLJ shots, but if you just remove her from the last act of TFA, you’d only need to cut most of her shots out, maybe take her out of 2~ shots, and make any necessary fixes to the viewscreen.
You could just imply they took out the guards (which you see lying dead at the entrance), Finn walks away from the control panel (implying he already did something to the computer) to ask Han something, then he turns back around and you cut to a shot of just the viewscreen to see that the shields are in fact going down. End of scene.
But that’s just how I have imagined it in my head.