Murphy's Lore

tl;dr: There's no evidence the interview that this was mentioned in even exists, no evidence the route of the cable has ever changed, and the whole story seems to originate from one dude's podcast.

Firstly, cut the Interlude Arc. The only episode that really adds anything is the Haruomi episode, and it's not strictly needed.

Secondly, instead of the GIFT arc revolving around an entire cult, make it more about Miharu as an individual and Rose.

So first episode has Tomoro and co encounter Miharu, a girl partnered with her deceased sister's Wizarmon. She gets wrapped up in some kind of Digimon crime, and during it Wizarmon shows itself to be weirdly powerful. End on Rose reporting to Wong & Genjo that she's found the White Core, so here Rose at least (and maybe all the Five Stars) know about it.

Then focus the arc on people trying to catch Miharu. Rose and Brilliant Thorn recruit Raito and the four of them go after her, and maybe bring in the Digimon Traffickers from earlier arcs as another faction after her. The Traffickers work here both because they're an antagonistic faction that's already set up, and because it's not a huge deal to have them fairly unceremoniously dealt with towards the end of the arc, because they've always been a sort of generic crime group.

Kishiwada is introduced as an amicable, if slightly bumbling friend of Miharu's sister, someone she can trust -- and he reveals to Tomoro that he's the one who gave the White Core to Miharu's sister after stealing it from the World Union, although he's cagey about what it does. We find out much earlier that Miharu's sister died.

Reina and Makoto still get their Perfect-levels here: Reina gets Bearcatmon in a battle against both Meto and Kanon, Makoto gets his in a battle against -- idk, probably a Trafficker, probably even still using Helloogarmon. I'd say against Raito and Azhdarmon, but Beatbreak seems to want to keep Raito a Tomoro-only opponent.

This whole thing works a bit better I think because it's easy to establish in just one or two episodes and then dip in and out of while Miharu is staying with Glowing Dawn (and it gives a good excuse for Kyo to be out of action -- he's bodyguarding Miharu). You can even have Miharu bonding with Glowing Dawn a little more by having her tag along on some of their Cleaner jobs and helping out as a member of the team.

The end of the arc sees Kishiwada contact Miharu saying he's discovered either a way to neutralise the White Core, or he's discovered something about her sister, but he needs her to come alone. Miharu goes to see him in a VR space, only for Genjo to appear. Kishiwada has sold Miharu out.

Glowing Dawn pursues, trying to rescue Miharu, but they are blocked: Rose, Meto, Kanon, and Raito are there, and after a moment, Gokuwmon arrives too. Rose and Lilamon face off against Reina and Bearcatmon to actually do something with that whole subplot; Gokuwmon fights Kyo and Murasamemon; Meto/Toropiamon and Kanon/Alraumon fight Makoto and ScourgeChiropmon; and Raito and Azhdarmon fight Tomoro and MonarchLizamon.

Tomoro finishes his fight first, and while he wants to fight Gokuwmon, he has to rush ahead to save Miharu. He arrives just after Genjo has left, but while they were fighting, Kishiwada revealed to Miharu that the World Union killed her sister on Wong's direct order. The White Core activates, Wizarmon becoming Mephismon, leading to the final battle there.

(Hell, you can even have Genjo still be there. Have Tomoro learn here that the Five Stars are the ones with Asuka's E-Pulse! It's only four more episodes, including one that's mostly flashback, until that becomes relevant to the plot again, after all. I feel like the writers thought they couldn't have Tomoro learn because he'd immediately want to do something about it, so Genjo just fell into obscurity in the GIFT arc: But the Kyo Arc takes place over two days, and given that learning Wong has Asuka's E-Pulse means learning that the world government has it, it is entirely plausible to have Tomoro want to do something but just have the next arc open with 'Kawarazaki and Maki are investigating, Tomoro is using the anniversary party to distract himself.')

Elsewhere, the rest of Glowing Dawn finishes their fights: Reina defeats Rose, Makoto defeats Meto and Kanon, and Gokuwmon leaves with the result of his fight against Murasamemon being basically a stalemate.

In the aftermath, Kishiwada takes the White Core from Mephismon and escapes using water powers that this time he hasn't shown before, immediately cluing the audience in at the end of the arc that he's a much bigger deal than he seems. Miharu and Wizarmon then decide to leave town, because they don't trust Wong won't be hunting them. Raito, defeated by Tomoro again, joins up with Kaito and Honoka.

The Kyo Arc can then basically proceed unchanged. Rose getting coldhearted early in the arc isn't such a big deal now because she's actually already been the main antagonist of her own arc, and had her defeat by Reina.

Then, with the Interlude Arc gone, the Asuka Arc gets three more episodes to play with -- 11 episodes to close out the plot is easy. A luxurious amount of time to conclude everything.

Some things are lost if the arc is done this way: GIFT was a cool idea, so it's a shame to lose it, but it's not as if that plot ever gets utilised to its fullest extent in the show anyway. You'd potentially lose the Maki episode, although tbh you don't have to, you can very easily do the exact same episode just with the Traffickers as the one hiring an assassin instead -- they have good reason to go after Maki, as someone who hires Cleaners. You potentially lose the TACTICS episode, although ... again, you don't really have to, and in fact you can have that episode happen exactly the same way and just change the ending reveal to Raito working with Rose instead.

The biggest loss, though, is probably that it makes Miharu a much less interesting character. She's no longer the vengeance-obsessed architect behind a complex scheme involving a cult, she's effectively just a nice, uncomplicated good guy who goes a bit crazy when she finds out her sister got murdererd. And that is a shame, but like with GIFT, Beatbreak doesn't really follow through on Miharu's interesting complexity particularly well anyway. Like the other option here is that you retool the show from the very start to make it more of an ongoing war between Wong and GIFT from the very beginning, and while that could work even better than just overhauling this arc, it's sort of outside this post's scope.

"Okay, so we'll just have 3/7 kingdoms secede, forever marking Rhaenyra as the monarch who lost nearly half the kingdom. Those seceding kingdoms will include the two richest kingdoms who have a stranglehold on food and metal production, along with the centre of the main religion, while the four you have will include Dorne, which is functionally an independent polity in all but name anyway. These three seceding kingdoms will then form a new country led by a lineage with a claim to your throne, thus ensuring they are always a threat."

"Someone will die."

Some are obvious:

Hikifune is definitely the most recent. We know exactly when she joined (100 years ago), so that's pretty settled.

Ichibe is definitely the first, as their leader and as someone we know existed before the three worlds.

That leaves Oetsu, Shutara, and Tenjiro.

Oetsu is probably the second: He's the creator of zanpakuto, which seem pretty foundational to Soul Society's whole deal -- and given that Ichibe used his powers to remove the Soul King's name and those powers are from his zanpakuto, it seems plausible that Oetsu also existed before the three worlds, or at least very shortly after they were formed.

That makes Shutara probably the third. The invention that got her into the Royal Guard was the shinigami uniform, and we know those were invented over 2000 years ago. (Given she also personally knows Mayuri, this means Mayuri is insanely old). She also refers to her final release as 'Bankai' rather than the old term 'Shin'uchi' that Ichibe uses, which implies she achieved it after that nomenclature shift, so she automatically has to be newer than Oetsu (nomenclature shift for zanpakuto can't happen before zanpakuto exist, after all).

And then Tenjiro makes sense for the fourth. He knows Unohana personally, having taught her healing arts, and seemingly was around when she switched from World's Best Murderer to World's Best Healer, which was <1000 years ago.

The Master of Masters represents Pride, but he's not really a haughty, self-obsessed narcissist in any way, even though out of any character he probably has the best reason to be. Instead, his Pride comes through in his wholehearted belief that only he can shoulder the burden of saving the world: Having given himself the mission of preserving the dignity of humanity against the thirteen Darknesses, and being fully willing to sacrifice himself (and many, many others) to achieve that, he is entirely unwilling to share his plans or ask for help in any way. He can and does manipulate people into serving his agenda, but it seems to never even occur to him that if he just honestly explained what he was doing, other people might help him find a better path.

Aced represents Sloth, and while he's an extremely proactive character, he makes zero effort to actually honestly complete the task given to him and frankly seems uninterested in even trying. He was told 'back up Ira as his second-in-command and take over if necessary,' and immediately memory-holed the part of that he didn't like ('back up Ira') and jumped straight to the part he did 'take over.'

Ava represents Greed, and will lie, cheat, and betray the people closest to her to get what she wants. But what she wants isn't her own personal enrichment, it's a future where nobody needs to be sacrificed. And that's meaningful because the MoM, who is effectively god to her, flat-out claims that that's not possible, and Ava wants it so bad that she will defy his edicts and try to get it anyway.

Invi represents Envy, and fittingly resents multiple people -- she resents Aced being Ira's second-in-command, she resents Gula being tasked with rooting out the traitor, she resents Ava for being able to follow her own morals. But rather than actually being treacherous, she just sort of passively tries to muscle in on those roles, filling the gaps they leave and overstepping her authority to do so.

Gula represents Gluttony, and apart from the obvious angle of 'he's hoarding light to try and summon Kingdom Hearts,' he's also trying to hoard the happiness he had before everything went horribly wrong. He's almost the reverse of Ava: Ava seeks a better future, while Gula just wants to gorge himself on an endless repetition of his happiest days.

Ira represents Wrath. He's a wide-eyed idealist who really wants to believe that good always prevails and that people are inherently good -- and because of that idealism, is entirely incapable of coping with the idea of other people having flaws, which quickly escalates to not just paranoia over his other Foretellers but outright hating them for failing to live up to his ideal of what they should be. Every single time there's a problem, Ira spirals into barely contained rage.

Luxu represents Lust, and while he's not A Super Horny Guy, he fits it really well in the Buddhist sense of excessive attachment to physical existence. He jumps from body to body because he's unwilling to permit the inevitability of death, refuses to allow his time as a physical being to end. Or hey, maybe he is A Super Horny Guy, he's definitely been inside plenty of other people.