...Peter Grefory had lived?

I know that couldn't have happened due to unfortunate real world circumstances, but I finished watching the show recently and while it was amazing all the way to the end, I got to thinking a lot of what happened was due to the change in characters and dynamics when Peter died.

I got the feeling that even if the writers had a general idea of how the story played out, the events leading to it would have been drastically different. And here's what I think would have been the major differences (most of it has to do with Laurie):

1) Laurie was not only more matter of fact and ruthless than Peter (they both were but Peter clearly used to be idiolistic) but she also didn't care about tech. Peter would have reacted and done differently with PP bc he actually understood and was once passionate about the things they were trying to do. Laurie was just the head of a VC, she only cared about profit.

Richard could directly explain in detail to Peter what he was doing and Peter would understand and also maybe he could relate to Richard. There's a lot of stories and situations that I believe would have played out extremely differently with Peter instead of Laurie bc of that.

2) Laurie had no inherit connection to any of the characters. I wouldn't be surprised if the show was going to have more of focus on the dynamic btw Gavin and Peter and they both represented the different outcomes and aspects of who Richard is. And Gavin would have had more direct confrontation with Peter in the long run. But he had nothing to do with Laurie outside of occasional business deals.

I think Peter's death made the writers change Gavin's role especially in the show. Don't get me wrong, I love how the focus became Richard vs Gavin and Gavin basically representing Richard without the tethics or friendships he had that kept him from becoming a bad person. But I wonder if the show would have had more to do with Gavin vs Peter and that would have driven a lot of the plot lines.

What do you think?