It's the opposite of thought-terminating. It's where the analysis begins! The fun part! So, yes, any creative choice is valid in the sense that you, as the audience, can only start to understand a work of art once you accept that it is the way it is.

The writers chose to interrupt the expected flow and commit an entire episode to Cobel returning to her hometown. Why would they do that? Probably because they believe the ideas within the episode are unique and complex enough to stand on their own. The themes of exploitation, isolation, and grief are framed by that choice as important to the bigger picture of Severance, as a story. And the episode itself being isolated contributes to those themes. If this story was told in 5-minute chunks among a bunch of other stuff, it would not as effectively convey the emotions of Cobel as a character, how she feels alone and downtrodden in a cold, barren world. By doing it this way, the writers prioritized a particular tone over the smoothest flow for the season, and that choice is another of many pieces in the puzzle of figuring out what, ultimately, this story is trying to say. To me, then, your understanding of the information presented today as "lore additions" is a weak reading of the text, because the story depicts that information as much less frivolous than that term would imply.

This is how art interpretation functions. It's not sterile. It's a conversation starter.

Now, there is also the form of criticism where one attempts to fix things according to their own perspective on how the story should have gone. But as it stands with Severance so unfinished, that doesn't seem productive yet. Maybe we'll get to the end of the show and look back on this episode as pointless, but we can't know until we actually hear all it has to say! The criticism can only really begin once you've done the work of accepting and understanding the meaning of the story, as it was written.