Really nice analysis both of you.
On Gale's persona I suspect there is a mask behind the mask and his good guy persona is the performance of a lifetime. He presents as carefully guarded but lets his guard down really quickly but I'm guessing the guarded facade was always a slight of hand designed to distract from his "we're intimates now" facade. I'm guessing he's secretly a Sharran agent -- would explain his interest in Shadowheart and the fact that his quest is really consistent with someone who had found the shadow weave.
I think Laezel's crisis is going to be about collective vs individual identity. At this point her entire personality is derived from her creche. If we find the creche and it turns out that there is no purification ritual, no extraction device she will need to decide if she will stay loyal to a creche and a culture that fed her lies.
Great point about Gale. I suspected there might be something like that after the talk with Raphael. This one was very inconsistent with everything else he did but I'm still not sure what to make of it.
About Wyll - I like the idea of Wyll's character much more than Wyll himself in practice. Right now he just annoys the crap out of me, but I also feel the "fake" in all of his lines.
