A while back I made a little visualization to aid the discussion around the Harrow the Ninth epilogue, and to kind of poke fun at the silliness:
Now it's time for a slightly less silly attempt to actually nail down my guesses. Let's start with a review of certain facts.
Fact 1: Epilogue Lady has a healing factor
Or at the least, she is super-humanly immune to heat, as seen by her consumption of snacks straight off the stove - an ability noteworthy enough to require her supervisors to forego future visits to the same snack retailer.
In TLT universe, only Lyctors and God can heal like that. Alecto likely can too, given that she is some kind of a Big Deal. But crucially, Gideon can't, when she's in her own body. Yes, she was immune to poison gas as a baby, but any other kind of regular injury she sustains in Gideon the Ninth - and there are plenty - does not cause her to heal any faster than a normal human. This isn't a crazy necromantic siphoning or life-threatening toxin, it's a light burn. There is no precedent for her healing from something like that, and lots of evidence that she wouldn't.
Since we also have clear evidence that healing is linked to bodies, not to souls (Gideon heals in Harrow's body), this leads me to conclude that Epilogue Lady is not in Gideon's body:
Fact 2: Epilogue Lady likes tasty snacks
This might seem trivial, but in my mind it conclusively rules out any possibility that Harrow is piloting this individual. There's simply no universe in which Harrowhark "can't even eat a biscuit" Nonagesimus - however amnesiac she may be - is thrilled by the idea of salty meat.
Fact 3: Epilogue Lady is... a lady
Hey, gender is fluid, especially in a body-swapping universe, and we already have canon characters whose souls occupy bodies of the opposite gender. But it just seems frankly beyond belief that Tamsyn would create this mysterious "she" and then have either body or soul be a known cis-male character.
Plus, Camilla's grey eyes suggest that if her necro is anywhere in the physical plane, it's in her.
Sorry, Sex Pal. You were only included because of a few awesome theories spotted on the threads, but at this point I can't take your application any further.
Fact 4: Camilla and friends are trying to work out who Epilogue Lady is
This doesn't tell us anything definitive, but it is perhaps suggestive that Camilla 1) is deciding between a limited pool of possible people and 2) already knows those people well enough that she could recognize them when they showed themselves.
This makes "as-yet-unmet character" and Alecto considerably less likely in the soul department, and Gideon and Harrow both more likely.
I'm also going to state that the idea of this being some randomer's body seems distinctly improbable on narrative grounds.
That leaves us with the following grid:
4. Alecto in Harrow's body
I mean... how would this even happen? There's only two routes to this scenario I can see: 1, Harrow is in the actual Tomb at the end of HtN, and somehow bonds with Alecto there. Or 2, if we believe that Alecto is involved in saving Gideon-in-Harrow from the River, perhaps Harrow's body gets connected to Alecto via that route.
Neither of these is at all convincing imo. Plus it goes against the whole narrative thrust of the series - Harrow surely has to deal with Alecto, her love and also possible nemesis, face-to-face. Fighting/smooching Alecto in her own brain seems to go against that, but on the other hand...it wouldn't exactly go against the entire TLT MO, and it certainly wouldn't be the weirdest shenanigans to have gone down.
Another point in favor of this angle is that Alecto and Harrow's souls may already have a connection via the Body hallucination. In some ways, Alecto has - possibly - always been in Harrow's body, so Epilogue Lady could just be a continuation of that. But it's still a long shot - we still don't know if the Body is truly Alecto. Frankly we don't really know anything about it.
3. Gideon in Alecto's body
I think there are a lot of fans who would go wild for this outcome - and an equal number who would rage-quit. It's definitely the most DRAMA option, and for that reason alone I believe it merits serious consideration. How would Harrow deal with the two people she cares about most swapping or sharing bodies? I for one would pay good money to find out, but I'm also aware that it's a bit like breeding dinosaurs: we should not get so wrapped up in whether we can that we fail to consider whether we should.
As mentioned before, it's possible that Alecto connects with Gideon's soul when she rescues her from the River. This theory also has a second clear route: we know that the BoE have Gideon's body and are likely aware of its Tomb-opening capabilities. It would make perfect sense for them to take it straight to the Ninth House and plug it in like a USB. Why would this result in Alecto walking out with Gideon's soul? It probably wouldn't; if anything it would be the reverse. Okay so the route isn't that clear...
Ultimately, it seems unlikely to me that the next book, titled Alecto the Ninth, would introduce the eponymous character's body, but with another person driving it. Which is why I rank the next scenario higher:
2. Alecto in Alecto's body.
To me, we are now entering the realm of options that seem more intuitive and simply easier to imagine. The book is Alecto the Ninth. The character is Alecto. The whys and wherefores certainly remain opaque, but the bottom line is quite natural.
There is reason to believe that there is a connection between resurrection and amnesia. The Lyctors don't seem to remember their pre-Resurrection lives. A freshly raised Alecto would have a ready-baked reason to have forgotten who she is. We know the BoE have been trying to fetch her from the Tomb, and Camilla is working for them.
I would not be massively surprised if Epilogue Lady turns out to be just plain old Alecto, the protagonist of the next book, just as the GtN epilogue focused on Harrow. Yet despite the likelihood of this option, I don't think it's the most likely. Allow me to introduce:
1. Gideon in Harrow's body
You know her, you love her. She starred in most of Act Five. And what is an epilogue if not - kinda, sorta, if you squint - part of Act Five? Wouldn't it be natural for our story to start from where it left off with Gideon-in-Harrow dying in the River, and continue with the same character now amnesiac on a strange planet? I mean natural by TLT standards, of course. In any other series this entire paragraph would be purest batshit.
Let me begin my case for this scenario by reminding you of Fact 4: Camilla is trying to work out who this fucker is. If she'd simply gone and snatched Alecto from the Tomb, the question of identity wouldn't arise. But if she's looking into the face of her old colleague-cum-adversary Harrowhark, and yet seeing a carefree, unpainted lass who likes hot food, her confusion makes a hell of a lot of sense. If, additionally, she has access to Palamedes' medical acumen, and it was they who saved Griddle from the River, then it perfectly explains how this collection of weirdos has come to be together. And the resurrection-amnesia link may apply here just as much as to Alecto.
Allow me to continue my case by introducing Fact 5: Camilla & co are on the run. They are in hiding behind anti-sniper glass, trying not to let anyone know about Epilogue Lady's powers. If they had been on a BoE mission to the Tomb, they would now be back at HQ or in a secure base of operations. If they instead decided to follow their own project of rescuing some old friends from a gory demise in a liminal dimension, and if they are now consorting with a known Lyctor (or at least a Lyctor's body) then it makes sense that they may have been disavowed by their BoE comrades and are potentially wanted fugitives from both sides of the war.
I'll just conclude my case by looking at the narrative angle. Harrow the Ninth has ended. Its final chapter shows the protagonist making the irreversible decision to entomb herself in her own subconscious. But Gideon has risen again. If there's any way she survived the River, it would surely come with a large cost, like losing her memory. But she still has her instincts: she willingly does exercise and gets excited for junk food. When she's given bones she just holds them dumbly or puts them in her mouth. Gideon has embarked on the next stage of her journey, where she gets to remake herself without being raised by death nuns. It would make sense as a good choice for her character development, and would also be horribly bittersweet in essentially erasing both the Gideon and the Harrow we know. Diabolically bittersweet, some might say. Classic Tamsyn.
The case for Gideon-in-Harrow is by no means watertight. In some ways, it's bloody weird to have so much mystery about the whole thing if the answer is simply the same character from a couple of chapters ago. I also think we should give major thought to another possibility altogether: that the true Epilogue Lady doesn't appear on this chart at all. Say your prayers and brace yourself for:
#? The Melange
What if you lose yourself to eventual madness and are reabsorbed, leading to some kind of melange—you know what Teacher was—a patchwork fusion between your soul and fragments of Gideon’s?
-Abigail Pent, definitely not foreshadowing anything (HtN, p461)
It's almost too horrifying to contemplate, but what if Gideon and Harrow have indeed merged into a single consciousness? Let's face it - this option would fit all the facts very nicely, especially the identity confusion, and it would thematically resonate with their "one flesh one end" journey.
Remember that the epilogue is the start of book three, not the end. There's still time for things to get...untangled. No one wants our lovely lesbians to merge in any sense but the biblical. But I say again: Classic Tamsyn.
And on that delightful note...that's all I've got for now. If anyone wants to start an actual book for cash bets, hit me up!
The final chart:
