At this point, it would be like putting Brent Spiner in and saying he's NOT a Soong. Although given what you just said about the punk on the bus, I would now not be surprised if they did that this season.
This reminds me of the conversations around WandaVision, where fans felt they were lied to when it appeared the FOX Evan Peters’s version of Quicksilver appeared, but was revealed to not have been that iteration of the character at all.
There was an assumption of canonical intent in a clear reference/nod/callback that doesn’t impact or inform the story at all. It’s not unreasonable to assume that the bus punk was responding because of ST IV, of course, because that’s the moment the script/episode/show is referencing. But it’s not impossible/implausible, and doesn’t not weaken/destroy that way the rest of the story has played out and been depicted, to consider that the bus punk could have coincidentally reacted this way without having had to encounter Spock and Kirk.
And this is way more time that I care to spend talking about it already.
I didn’t require convincing from the authors to see the story as internally consistent with its own time travel logic accounting for Guinan not knowing her and Picard’s
Time’s Arrow history. Clearly, not everyone is in agreement, but I take issue with the false characterization of myself and others that “all it took was word from a writer,” when many of us where discussing getting the same impression before Matalas/anyone officially from Picard had commented.
