The reused booster that blew up was coming in with an extra hot and stressing landing profile, so I wouldn't read too much into that blowing up.
I agree that they need to make reuse and refueling work for their proposed Artemis architecture to be viable. I'm saying they could be up and running as a traditional disposable upper stage already if they wanted to. 50 tons to LEO is a start. Add a kick stage and you can do some cool stuff with that.