Marcone's hot secret teenage son, of course.

Her coming back as a Valkyrie has been my hypothesis all along. People say "she can't even come back as an Einherjar as long as her memory hasn't faded from living memory", to which I say a.) the source of that quote is not exactly trustworthy, given whom her direct boss is and b.) rules in fiction exist to be broken, like the rules of magic, which Butcher already said that Harry would break them all at one point or another.

He may be stronger with them, but take them away any he will become stronger without them. Harry needs to grow in strength. So take away support to make him grow and give it back in the end to make him even stronger after he has grown.

Agree to disagree. I think he grows way better with the support of his friends, otherwise he begins to wallow in arrogant self-pity.

Peak physical is where she was at in BG so no power up there. And Einherjar are not immortal, they died in PT and BG. Wereguild was paid for their deaths

Uh, not sure which two last books you read, but Murphy was far from "peak physical condition", after the mauling she got from Nicodemus. Einherjar are immortal in the sense that they don't age anymore. Not immortal in the sense that they can't die again. Well, it seems, in the Dresden-verse. No guarantees that they are not able to come back again and again, like in the Magnus Chase books from Rick Riordan. We have no absolute certainty yet on how they function in the Dresden-verse.

Only problem is that Jim said no power ups for Murphy. Valkyrie would be a powerup. So no Valkyrie powers for Murphy. And keep her out of the books for now. Harry needs to learn to think and work without her. He's almost always had her as an adviser.

She's an Einherjar right now already, so that "rule" of "no power ups" is, obviously, kaputt. As for the latter, I disagree. Having support by this friends is what makes Harry strong, especially if they are well capable of calling him out on his tendency to beat himself up emotionally and for his occasional arrogance.

That she is an Einherjar now does not in any way, shape, or form mean she couldn't have become a Valkyrie before.

Or, y'know, after.

I think if she were a Valkyrie in training, Gard would have said it..

Or maybe Gard has some orders from higher up to be circumspect about it.

Yes, and bringing her back somehow cheapens the character.  Tis a pet peeve of mine in books, movies, and television shows, the writers do a really outstanding job making an end for the character.  Not always death either, just a good end.. But some idiot decides that was such a poetic end, that we need to make a sequel, bring him or her back to somehow enhance the other characters.. It usually doesn't  work, I'm thinking of a character they brought back from the dead, Tasha Yar, then killed her off again poetically in an alternate universe "Yesterday's Enterprise."  Then decided that because that was such a success, lets bring her back as her half Romunlan daughter because Tasha Yar really did survive the battle that no one in the current timeline even knows happened, and the Tasha Yar of the current timeline died a needless death years before in a run in with an oily alien...

Quite the contrary with me. I think killing off a character robs him of all future potential. The better solution is to not kill them off in the first place, but I'd rather have them back then be gone forever. It doesn't always work out in the end, true, but often it does. I'm a comics guy, so I am pretty inured to the argument that "dead means dead", anyway.

Also, I personally still think Jim is not the guy to kill off main characters in the way Murphy did go. There is too much foreshadowing with her training with the Einherjar and the way she interacted with Freydis and just the fact that she got taken away to Valhalla to let her just go. If she was meant to be out of the series, her going to the Catholic afterlife would have been the thing to do.