>>102291057No, they got forced to kill Sovereign off, by Cartoon Network's legal department. And by forced, they told them "You are BANNED from using the character ever again".
The shapeshifter retcon was their first attempt to appease the lawyers, who were deadly afraid Bowie would sue the show for unlawful use of his name and likeness. P&H BOTH kept trying to get Bowie to do a guest spot on the show, but constantly got told to fuck off by his agent (while having to watch Bowie do Sponebob of all fucking things).
It should also be noted that the episode that revealed Bowie to be a shapeshifter couched said reveal as Brock lying his ass off to a bunch of OSI agents (really, the Investors in disguise), as part of him covering up Hunter arranging Molotov's escape/executing alleged traitors inside OSI. They wrote that so they could have their cake and eat it too (IE Bowie is the Sovereign but a lot of people think he's just a shapeshifting imposture).
Sadly, when legal finally saw the episode, they were furious and ordered the character 100% axed. To their credit, the legal department DID allow P&H to write the character out instead of just dropping him into a black hole and unpersoning him. Though it came with Sovereign explicitly being stated to be impersonating Bowie and the character being killed off.