Well, I wouldn't consider it the WORST asspull in the series, but it's as much of an asspull as the entire Hashirama being gawd thing and his clan being the ones to start the Leaf. We already knew he had something to do with Madara due to those two statues at the valley of the end, but him being the strongest Hokage with sage mode was definitely something that didn't exist in Part 1 and got asspulled, along with most of the details about him and his clan's rivalry with the Uchiha. (Hell, we don't even know what happened to all the Senjus except Tsunade, the clan seems to have vanished for no real reason.) Even if he got resurrected once and we knew of his wood release, a whole bunch of things were still asspulled later by the time of his second resurrection (not much unlike this).
Thanks for posting the interview.