Perhaps you could straight up cut out any mention of slavery? Anakin just works for watto to help pay the bills. Manipulate the scenes to make it look like a casual wager.

That way when Anakin shows up in Ep 2 you can skip Watto. Go straight to Owens "I figured you'd show up eventually."

On a different subject, RotJ Revisited seems like it will be more of an actual fan edit than a special edition. I think it would be nice for Ady to release two versions - a straight special edition to finish the OT for purists, and the heavily edited (and hopefully IMO rearranged and narrative different) version. Thoughts?