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Not too surprisingly, I don't entirely agree with that interpretation. It all depends on what any given viewer wanted out of Lelouch's character in the first place and how each of us had already approached his changing mindset and perspectives, both moral and otherwise, during the events of the first season. Which didn't exactly end by leaving him in a positive or constructive state. In fact, he became increasingly desperate and extreme in his actions, which the death of Euphemia and the kidnapping of Nunnally only reinforced, instead of critically examining his behavior and choosing another plan.
Taking that into consideration...would a second season make Lelouch continue down the self-destructive path he started to embrace around the time of the Black Rebellion? Some people might have sincerely hoped for the opposite, but I always felt that was a real possibility and the show itself, one way or another, ultimately resumed this approach and simply took the character's arc to one of its potential conclusions. Considering the staff had already decided on Lelouch's fate at some indeterminate point before R2, I'd tend to doubt there was much of a realistic chance for any other alternative outcome in the eyes of the production team.
Therefore, the argument that Lelouch was "maturing" at the start of R2 can be debated. One point of view could ostensibly frame it this way, but there was also a very childish aspect to his attitude at that time: Lelouch wanted to have his cake and eat it. After his crisis in R2 episode 7, Lelouch hoped to turn back the clock and return to Ashford to be with his friends after the war. It all sounds very nice and happy, on paper, but is that really a sign of maturity? I don't think so. It was, arguably, a case of simplistic self-delusion on his part.
That can be seen as the actual regression, rather than what came later. Instead of facing the consequences of his actions and continuing straight ahead no matter the cost, like the end of the first season had established, Lelouch was now idealistically expecting that Britannia could be defeated at little or no personal cost to himself and his loved ones. Which was frankly too innocent and quite overreaching. Especially because Lelouch already knew that this struggle could be dangerous and painful. All the subsequent events of R2 did was to violently remind him of this reality. He couldn't run away and hide in the school to live a normal life at the end of his journey. I don't think the creators of Code Geass meant for that to be the right answer.
In light of this, it's neither unusual nor illogical for Lelouch to once again react with impulsiveness and emotion as things started getting worse around him rather than acting with pure reason. He never was a "cold" thinker in the first place and even his most "constructive" ideals had been based on his own personal feelings, rather than on any sort of calm intellectual ability. We had already seen just how vulnerable Lelouch could be and R2 simply exploited those gaps. That said, Lelouch might not be most mentally stable person in the world, but I think it's a rather overstated exaggeration to consider him a true "narcissist" or "psychopath" when compared to far more mentally broken individuals who more accurately reflect such descriptions. Admittedly, he did constantly suffer from delusions of grandeur. To say the least, one would imagine several of Zero's speeches wouldn't be so bold and pretentious if he weren't that type of person.
The second half of R2 did, admittedly, lack good pacing and the execution was often sloppy when it came to certain episodes or sequences. We all know that. I won't discuss ZR at length here, because it was literally the single most debated topic on this aging forum back in the day, and those who disagreed about it back then will still do so today. But I will say that the exact number and nature of the plan's casualties largely remain unspecified. After the war against the BK/UFN forces handed him global dominance, we saw only a brief glimpse of how Emperor Lelouch's dictatorship relied on the threat of violent repression, but absolutely nothing suggested there was any need for the German-style campaigns of genocide involving the organized concentration and extermination of millions of people.
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