That discolouration is typical - I would expect that stator will pass the isolation test and would actually be perfectly good operationally. I would never replace a stator just on that alone. Your replacement will almost certainly now look identical if you could see it. (well the epoxy coating on Ricks vs OEM is a little different, but the relative colour of the zones will be the same). It's actually just the epoxy coating that is discoloured.
You can validate it by just doing the resistance isolation check between any of the three pins to the center core.
The reason the isolation test is pretty much a gurantee one way or other is because the failure mechanism is that the insulation on one of the windings breaks down and contacts the core. No short to core, means the insulation is still intact and the stator is still good.
The darker zone is where there is less oil cooling.
Incidentally the way the coils are wound is that around the whole thing, individual coils adjacent to each other are in different phases - i.e. it goes 1,2,3, 1,2,3, etc (i.e. as the windings continue, when one coil is completely wound it skips over the next two bobbins and starts on the 4th one in line etc)
So it's not like all those coils are in the same phase and overheating because a single phase of the three is drawing more current - all three phases are being affected and the higher heat is local to that physical location in its fixed position, rather than one element of the stator. The heat actually being produced by the stator current is the same all the way around, it's just that less heat is removed by the poorer oil contact in that zone. So someone who doesn't understand the way it is wound (not unreasonably perhaps) think that 'one phase' is bad.
Every stator from every same model (i.e. in this case ALL Rockets) will exhibit that darker zone in the exact same location - also this is where the stator will fail, if/when it does.