What I meant was that any story arch containing Howard and Bernadette that the writers originally wanted to do had to be scrapped and replaced with the arch of them dealing with her passing.

I agree with most of what you said, but I think the second half of this season was thrown off by the death of Mrs.Wolowtiz. The actors had to deal with the loss of a coworker, and the writers (presumably) had to quickly rewrite the remaining episodes to incorporate a story I'm sure no one planned on doing (the…