https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu-images/commit/?id=bbe69c07960d086ec60f35493cbbd57d958711ad changed the Pi image definition to include universe and multiverse components, to fix incorrect sources.list in the target image.
This immediately caused a regression in the official images, because this enabled universe and multiverse for *building* of the image; official Ubuntu images are supposed to be built only from main and restricted, and having universe visible caused a dependency to be resolved via a wrong alternative.
There needs to be a way to declare that an image should be built from a subset of components, but should have the standard sources.list post-install. (In fact, universe should be in the sources.list by default without requiring any additions to the image definition - and I think multiverse should also be a default but might more often be disabled.)
This feature has now landed in the main branch, awaiting release.