Hmmm... I guess so, but the "loss" of Axis didn't hurt her in any way. I think, technically, it was enough for the empire big wigs that she figured out there was an Axis and the theft of imperial hardware. She got a promotion, made everybody else look silly for trying to maintain their little silo'd intergalactic feifdoms, got taken on to a super top secret special project, and even got herself boy-toy.

Tbh I suspect it was mostly skipped over due to season 2 being the last season. Blevin took her fall somehow and thats why he vanishes despite him being set up as a future confrontation in the future. And I think it was more of Partagaz taking a mentor role to her (In Rise and Fall of the empire, there is a passage about Partagaz warning female imperials that they have to work twice as hard).

My read is that she's been the "smartest bad guy in the room" for most of the series up to this point.

Is she the smartest? Or is she the only one who doesn't extend outside her job? We see all other ISB members having something else, values, a social life, a family, etc... Only Dedra is never seen outside her work, even syril's relationship is another extension of it. This can be seen once again at the dinner scene. She uses imperial integrations tactics to deal with syril's mom. Fascism even inside her "home". There is a reason why the writers included the fact that she was raised in an "imperial kinderblock", the word kinderblock originates with the holocaust. The Kinderblock was a section of the Buchenwald concentration camp, established on the pleading of communist prisoners to give children a better chance for survival, it was a place of socialist humanity and hope (huh seems like A THEME) in face of nazi oppression and genocide. Of course I doubt that is the imagery what that word wanted to evoke, its more likely that its to symbolize that she was raised "in a prison" so to speak, unaware of anything else but fascism. I once again repeat, The tragedy Dedra's character and the "evil" done to her, is that she is denied a personhood and basic humanity by the empire. She can not fathom that she doesn't "need" to be that way. Syril was the first disruption of that worldview and when he dies, she takes comfort again in fascism -> her straightening her uniform.

In general we focus on Syril & Dedra because they are NOT the standard imperials, like Partagaz, Lagret, Heert, Bloy or Kaido. Andor is still a story in the end. One of the laziest and uncreative methods for story crafting is just simply ripping off the real world, thats why I am so annoyed with the billions of recent iterations "get it, its just like the goddamn cheeto man!!!" -like what daredevil born again did to fisk, for example.