They should have deleted it and just included his name during the Imperial trainee scene. Which I guess goes for a lot of these weird annoying moments… they shelved half the movie but didn’t have any idea what actually worked.
I don’t think they really shelved all that much (just reshot).
Yeah, my understanding is that Lord and Miller were let go for straying too far from the Kasdans’ script and improvising too much, and Howard was brought in to bring the movie back on track (aka follow the script).