Have to be honest, I thought the reveals in this were pretty terrible. Many, many people had figured out that there was something wrong with the Els, but pulling the "turns out, it was actually shapeshifting aliens from outer-space!" card, like this was some cheesy B-movie is just bad. It completely cheapens the story and the setting, because it removes any and all nuance from the conflict for the sake of a) Having a surprise and b) Having the "shoking death moments" while compeltely absolving any characters of any wrong-doing. Which wouldn't be bad if the tone they were going for were soemthing more lighthearted, but Taylor is so focused on creating a "serious" and "dramatic" scenario that pulling this frankly cartoonish swerve is just jarring. And the Alfred reveal is... Okay, I guess. But it suffers from the same problems many Taylor stories suffer: narrative cheats. Nobody figured that out, because there was nothing to suggest it was a mystery. Yet Taylor plays it as a reveal. Taylor should have just presented this as a strightforward fantasy-adventure with obvious villains (and with us knowing about them, this would have allowed them more screentime and made them more entertaining to watch - It's not like anybody cares the bad guys in Lord of Rings are straightforward villains), instead of this convoluted "mystery" that feels only exist because TT wanted people to think this was a deconstructionist fantasy ala Game of Thrones.

A pretty cool start except for one thing at the end...