However this is when I also discovered my external was wiped and all my files had been replaced with my Big Sur update files and user account files. I selected this and after reinstalling my old user account showed up with all of my applications, files, and preferences as they were. You can access the disk utility from there and there was also an option to “Reinstall MacOs Catalina”. Then a window should pop up with I think 4 different options. All I had to do was reboot in recovery mode(hold command + r once you hear the reboot noise).

Either way to get back to Catalina it was easier than anticipated thankfully. At that point I think it may have reformatted it for some reason. It may have been due to me specifying for Big Sur to install on the external since my local drive didn’t have the space for it. After trying to revert/downgrade back to Catalina I discovered that somewhere along the way my external hard drive was wiped. Just went through a bit of a fiasco after downloading MacOS Big Sur a bit pre-maturely.

Backblaze catalina