Fang Zei said:

When you think about, that must've been a cool, clever way of surprising everyone. It's like "oh, by the way (like it's nothing), this is Episode V, not Episode II."

I wonder what all the fanzines and newspapers (and, heck, the nascent internet) made of it in the days after Empire hit theaters.

It was definitely the most "post-modern" piece in ESB, which had otherwise jettisoned the nostalgic pastiche of SW.

I would think it was a fantastic idea to this day, if Georgie hadn't screwed the pooch so badly by trying to retcon in three whole failures of movies just to justify and elaborate that sly wink in 1980.