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Originally Posted by
Provengreil
As detailed below, I question your assessment of these tropes.
In who-dunnits, there are two main types. Fair-play and clueless, where the audience respectively does and doesn't have enough clues to make a proper guess before the reveal. OOTS follows neither of these types directly as it isn't that type of story. If you're using who dunnits as a metaphor for any greater mysteries, I'm not smelling what the rock is cooking here.
But OOTS isn't a romance so....ok? Same issue as above.
What parallels are you drawing to these from OOTS?
1: LOTR: Not a direct combat confrontation, which OOTS might not fully resolve with but will definitely involve.
2: Star Wars: Betrayed by an abused ally (possible, but doesn't really need the OOTS in particular here. That's an entire plotline contained within Team Evil right now).
3: Horned King: I only read a couple books and watched the extremely condensed Disney cartoon movie, so I honestly don't understand your point here.
4: Literally God does it for the heroes by the end (unlikely, even though it is Thor's plan).
The "if he did" phrase is doing some world-class heavy lifting in that sentence. Xykon's entire Lichdom has been thematically tied to the gates and Redcloak/TDO's plan. To resolve that story thread anywhere else than the last gate, in whatever condition or circumstance it's in, is the only real play from a Doylist standpoint.