Holy shit, this is literally as bad as the Han Shot First Controversy: the whole point is to show much of a POS character evolves and develops in a better person. If you take away his "POSness" this early and at this stage of his development, it literally lessons the value in the character. Who cares if a character has become more morally good if he was retconned to be as or almost as good before his final development? Even if it's just to hide his "POSness".
Was a bad idea to retconned Handsome Mask like this: