Hi there,
And Welcome here…
Great observation… Removing it, would remove any pins that may be held in an unknown or not acceptable logic state for the “Strapping” pin options at boot.
It is a common Gotcha in ESP32 and some others. (only in boot state though)
They all are pretty hard to permanently brick, but recovery can be tricky sometimes.
Thanks for the contribution , on this new hardware the info is coming out slow so good to know users are still carrying the torch 