Oh no, I do agree the death was from out of nowhere. However, there's another famous tragic love story called, erm, well, 'Love Story' (no marks for original title names...). That's about some woman who gets cancer (or another terminal disease, I forget) and does indeed die. That plods on and on and on.
So there's a choice: Death out of nowhere or a death that slowly creeps up on you? Either method isn't foolproof or correct or better; I don't think a slow death would have worked here either. Nor would keeping her alive; sadly, to see Dexter's full character arc, we have to see how he'd deal with another tragic death. He failed in the test of his mother's death, clearly - he became even shallower and self-obsessed not to mention the addictions - so this time, we see him pass.
He passes shakily, which I'm sure over the whole year and beyond included more than just the nightclub fight, but he does indeed pass. Thats why I liked the 'resolution': He isn't suddenly perfect, or has even slowly become perfect - he's just human, but we can see he's a better person than when he started and will probably keep on getting even nicer.
If it were a slow death, I think his development would have been at Emma's expense: it'd be too obvious what the story was doing - "She's gonna die so pay attention to him becoming a better person so it's not for nothing!". I don't think his development was though, since he was getting nicer ANYWAY, without 'needing' to be nice because she had a disease. And then when she does die? We don't even realise it straight away. It's not until we see their first meeting again that you realise he had it in him all along to be nice and ask for her number and be friends - we just don't see it til the scene with his daughter that he's starting to let that nicer person be at the forefront of his actions!
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