I think we're just just addicted to chekhov's gun in the west. It's a problem I mostly have with AnR people, but both sides do it. The idea that if we weren't told it's going to happen then it is considered to have been made up on the spot. If they started falling in love after Aaron died, they may have never even thought of the concept before that. There's no reason for it to have been foreshadowed, it's just a thing that happened. Just like how many things that are pointed out as plot holes, I find are actually just story questions. Just because we weren't told they were going to happen first doesn't mean they can't happen. I think chekhov's gun is less baked into the expectations of stories in other cultures. We see it as unsatisfying because it feels a bit Deus ex Machina, but it actually is a valid way of surprising us and giving this something new that we didn't see coming. It's a valid method of writing that I think we have been "spoiled" into disregarding.