I'm not sure why people are up in arms over the framework. The story's built around a mystery hook, and and some point you have to go through the "how we got here" explanation. Well, I suppose you could skip it, but then you're blatantly using a MacGuffin, and everyone would be up in arms anyway.

It's pretty much got to be explained at some point, and you can either do it in the middle, as a piece of the narrative, at the beginning as assumptions (which kill the mystery), or at the end, Scooby Doo-style. The way this one was done makes sense to me - action beat, downtime, exposition, and (I assume) action beat. It builds off of a plot point and serves to drive the story onward.