The galling thing is that the underlying base protocol was intentionally crippled in order to implement LN. The fact that such crippling wasn't even necessary only adds insult to injury, and calls into question the motives and wisdom of those who advocated for such.
In order to build on the basic protocol, fixing transaction malleability was long overdue. It could have been done some other way, right. Or things could have been left broken, as is the case for some shitcoins.
'Fixing malleability' was a gratuitous change that claimed to resolve something that was an absolute non-issue. It was the manner in which it was accomplished, and the other changes bundled into The SegWit Omnibus Changeset that were the true evils.
From my perspective, malleability was not an instance of broken-ness.