Thinking more on the issue, I suspect the fact that it is 20 years old has a lot to do with it (and it was surely written at minimum a year before it aired). I think we take for granted now how sophisticated shows have begun to assume their audiences to be. In fact, sometimes I think they've gotten a little too precious in assuming that audiences don't need some sort of narrative consistency. I can think, for example, of S2 of Legion as well as two other shows I've been watching recently -- The Young Pope and S2 of Westworld. (A large cast has also become very common whereas before you'd be more likely to have a small group of stock characters).

But I think that perhaps the writers felt they had to set up Winters right away as our main character as well as rush us along to Normandy as a way of satisfying viewer expectations. So we have a behind-the-lines hero and villain set up even before we get to the battlefield where S2 points out that the lines there can get muddled.