As a black hole passes through spacetime, does it affect it?
No, a black hole, or any other gravitationally attracting object for that matter, does not change spacetime permanently, but only affects spacetime around it. The easiest way to see this, is to view the BH in its own frame of reference. Here, the BH is stationary, and spacetime around it is described by the Schwarzschild metric. If a BH came by you and left a physical imprint on spacetime after it (like a wake), then from the BH's frame that would mean that you would fly by it, and it would start producing a wake in the direction that you moved. You don't have such an effect on BHs.


Wrong scenario of observer and black hole passing each other, as viewed from the observer's (left) and the black hole's (right) reference frames.