I like the fact that Lena (or Ian, for that matter) can make distinctly bad or immoral choices, but I prefer playing them as good characters at heart who just ends up making bad choices, rather than them just being… evil.
I think some of the current scenes belong more to the former category, and some to the latter. When Lena steals from the café or treats Stan badly, it feels like she's just being cruel; Stan didn't do that much to deserve it, and Ed and Molly haven't done anything aside from struggling to keep her hired because they don't make enough money. She seemingly does it because her conscience doesn't tell her otherwise.
It feels like the pleasure she takes from making Mike cheat, is linked to her anger with how Axel treated her, like some sort of coping mechanism. But that's not very present in how it's portrayed, so overall that also comes across as a bit conscienceless. I’m not sure how Lena would react if she ever met Mike’s girlfriend (which may or may not happen in the future), but it surely would make it harder to rationalize the fact that there’s a victim she’s hurting in the process.
Her involvement with Jeremy is a bit of both; at first she just ends up seeing him and Louise fuck, and the blowjob at Ivy's place also feels more like a person doing a shitty thing without neccessarily being a bad person. One thing leads to another, the limits are gradually pushed. But then she sneaks into Louise's room and is all "rise and shine, sir, I'm here to suck your dick," and seems pretty devoid of guilty conscience. The fact that she's trying to hide that and the blowjob from Ian, on the other hand, is easier to understand. You fuck up, don’t want to confront it, and instead end up getting tangled into a net of lies.
Still her sex scene with Axel, if she’s in a relationship with Ian, is probably the best example of a horrible action from a not necessarily horrible person (though the lack of consent in that scene makes Axel way worse than Lena). It’s a complete fuckup straight after she told Ian she wants to be with him, but she absolutely hates herself for it afterwards.
