Well, it’s definitely more complicated, and perhaps harder to understand for someone not familiar with all the parts, but “overly” complicated? Nope. And yes, it could be done all in one go as you describe, if I understand the description correctly.
Being lazy myself, I might tend to wus out & just render two frame ranges, but that may not fit ryan’s needs very well. He has a lot of new info, so now the solution is in his ballpark.
Thanks everyone so much for all the answers! I will mark this as solved! I’m gonna take a look at clockmenders modified blend file and use that or just render multiple frame ranges. Depends how complicated the armature version is