I have been shown who is the boss!
Well, really, they're giving me another lead instead of having me be the team, which is good. I don't really have the sort of administration/management/dealing with other people's crap skills that my old lead did, so even though the new lead doesn't actually know any PHP or webdev stuff (yet), she does have all the skills needed to take on the job the old lead did: deflecting all the corporate overhead bullshit so that I can do actually do all the real work. Plus it's somebody I know and respect, so it's at least better than the possibility of being jammed unceremoniously under some douchebag.
We're still hiring a third, though, and the nice thing is the requirements are likely to be much more relaxed now (though the job posting that's being tailored for the position doesn't make it seem so).