Ron Howard probably wasn’t deep enough into the material to know if it was a good idea or not. If he shot the Maul footage in the first place.
Peter Serafinowicz(sp?) was on a podcast recently where he talked about recording lines for Maul for Solo, and he said Ron Howard talked with him for like an hour about where Maul was at this point in his life, and his motivations and such. It was before they shot Ray Park’s live action portion - Park performed to Serafinowicz’s performance.
Then the powers that be decided to go with Sam Witwer instead for more continuity with the animated Maul, and Serafinowicz wasn’t told until after the premiere that his VO had been cut.
So Howard is who shot the Maul stuff.