This may be totally impossible, but I’m just spitballing. If we cut around the “Hux is a spy” stuff, would it be possible to imply that Pryde kills Hux in order to merge the First Order with the Final Order on Palpatine’s…er, orders? So it’s like Pryde is staging a coup, as a Palpatine cultist, in order to bring the First Order resources to Exegol?
Not sure if there’s enough footage to effectively portray this, but I thought it was an intriguing angle. The Spy stuff can almost definitely be removed; I have an edit of the Poe’s return/“What did you do to the Falcon?” scene somewhere that I made as a proof of concept.
Removing the spy plot thread would be a really complicated matter which would remove several portions of the film. Imo not worth removing as it would make the pacing even more quick.
EDIT: My previous comment on everything else we discussed ended up on the previous page. Check that out as well if you want.