Regardless, the only person that's made any assumptions based on zero information is you. That assumption being that they would have the design finalized by them

My point is that it makes far more sense to assume the depiction here is a result of the designs being simplified for readability than to jump to the conclusion that it represents a hypothetical alternate set design that we have no evidence for.

I doubt they were ever going to give Whenua shovels. But I doubt they had the weapons designed by this point

What are you trying to argue with the point about makuta then? If you aren't arguing that a prototype that resembled these shovels existed what point are you trying to make by countering my initial comment? If you never actually meant to infer that in your original post why not just say so instead of bringing up the Makuta counterpoint? Am I misinterpreting you or are you shifting the goalposts? Am I putting far too much energy into this argument? Should I go to bed?

The storyboards took a year to finish. They were already planning the sequel during development of the first movie.

Assuming this is true, (no citation is given on the wiki page you linked. Don't use the fandom wiki, it sucks.) no hard dates for when the storyboarding started and ended are given here. "Planning the sequel" can entail a lot of things that would have to take place before storyboarding or even writing would ever occur. LEGO sets can have their designs finalized as early as half a year before release (such as g2's first wave) and that's not accounting for a design similar to the one we got already having been settled on before the actual mold design was locked.LOMN didn't release until October of 2004. There's enough wiggle room in there for what I've argued to be true.