If my WAG about this is correct, "Cowl" isn't a threat at all -- "Cowl" exists solely as a shadow to train-up Harry, to shake up the White Council, to get various powers-that-be and individuals off their duff's and into action.

Because there really IS a hidden threat; it really HAS been working for years; and Odin wants folks alert to it, opposing it, and ready to fight when the Big One happens.

Could be, hard to tell even at this point.  Though it appears that Cowl was at Bianca's party and had something to do with Lea getting the infected knife.  Of that is true, he is hardly harmless and I doubt that he shows up with the purpose of training up Harry.

Cowl is way, way, way underpowered to be Odin.
Like... multiple orders of magnitude.

Cowl isn't even in Ebenezer's weight-class.

Unless, of course, OdinCowl has been pulling his punches... acting a threat to help folks see the damned obvious right under their noses but always (just barely) failing.

Which seems like it'd actually be pretty Odin-esque, TBH.

My question is what is the point? They may appear very much alike, but if Odin is Cowl why is he undercutting himself?  Last I checked they don't play on the same team.. Of course that may be the point.

  One wonders if Murphy made herself vulnerable to be taken by Odin when she spent so much time
training with the Einherjaar.  After she left the police force she was adrift.  After Harry seemingly died I think she also became disillusioned about her faith, she seemed to have found a purpose when she started doing some work with Odin.  If she hadn't been dismissed from the police force and had remained a practicing Catholic I doubt she would have woken up in Valhalla.   

Jim just answered a question about the Jade Court which probably applies to Mab.  Jim said that members of Jade Court behave in a manner that might appear to be autistic, but not exactly.  The reason it may apply to Mab is Jim said it's just the way that creatures who are functionally immortal keep themselves sane.  They wrap themselves in ritual, performing specific behaviors.  I think in the Jade Court's case this behavior is exacerbated by the fact that their particular culture is so insular to begin with.

This might explain why Mab told Harry that he should kill Molly if Mab died during the events in Battle Ground.  Molly doesn't perform the kind of behaviors that Mab has become accustomed to doing to function as an immortal.  However, it's possible that Mab is wrong, that Molly has just found a different way to adjust to the pressure of being immortal.  I suppose that is a question for a different thread and probably one that cannot be answered until sometime in the future. 

Here's a link to the exact quote: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRcj4gvGXKI
The question starts at about 32:30 into the talk

It makes sense, neither the Fae or the Jade Court are human, they are not mortals even if they appear that way, thus their behavior cannot be judged as mortals judge mortal behavior.  It does get tricky in cases like Mab, because she once was a mortal.  As Mother Winter says with disgust, "she is a romantic," meaning in my opinion that she believes that Mab's judgement is sometimes influenced by what little human or mortal that is left in her.  However Mab has worn a Fae mantel for so long she is 99.999% Fae now,views the world and reacts to the world mostly as a Fae, thus to mortals her behavior appears to be autistic..

Mother Summer tries to explain what ties and the divides mortals and the Fae to Harry in Cold Days pages 326-327

" You are endlessly fascinating.  We conceive our children with mortals.  We move and sway in time to the mortal seasons.  We dance to mortal music, we make our homes like mortal dwellings, feast upon mortal foods. We find parts of ourselves becoming more like them, and yet we are not like them.  Many of the things they think and feel, and a great many of their actions, are inexplicable to us."

Harry doesn't say it, but mortals can return the favor, much of what the Fae think, feel, and actions are inexplicable to mortals... Thus while some mortals may view Mab's behavior as being autistic, in the end she is just behaving like a Fae.

Another thought I had:  maybe one of the side-effects of the WQ-Mantle might push the bearer towards autism-like behaviors.

Harry and Molly are (so far) mostly resisting the worst of their Mantles' impulses... but Mab has been subject to hers for about a thousand years, we think...

 It might be interesting to study Lea's behavior, she doesn't have a mantle, but she is Fae. My impression of her, and now I will have to go back and look for it to be sure, but I think she has a lot of the same impulses that Mab has.  The Fae are not human as the Mothers pointed out to Harry back in Cold Days.  So while the tendencies of Mab may look autistic to us, that is a human diagnosis for human behavior which might be totally normal in a Fae Queen.

The only real information we have on how it feels to be a vessel of a mantel is what Harry says he is going through as Winter Knight.  The affect on him has been hyper-aggressiveness which can be a problem until he figured out that heavy exercise can burn off the excessive testosterone/epinephrine
jolts to his system to a more manageable level.  I have to reread what Molly says about it, if anything, but it appears that the Lady and Queen mantels run on a different system.

None of the younger kids have any power, specifically because Charity was abstaining from magic use.

I haven't seen that, but then I don't keep up with WOJs that much so I take your word on that.

Now, this still follows "natural" law, the "rule of science:"  epigenetics is the study of how genes express, of how  environmental/dietary/etc factors alter the expression of genes.  It'd be unsurprising if active magic were an epigenetic factor (raising the question of whether just "hanging out with" a very-actively practicing wizard, or having lots of spells cast upon you, could activate latent genes).

That's one of the unexplained things in both magic and science.  As in how is it that a very gifted child in any field turn up in a very ordinary family with no family history of gifted and talented people, or interest in the field the child is so gifted in..  What is more, two geniuses marry and have children who share none of their parent's gifts.  It can get really complicated with exceptions that can prove or disprove almost every rule.  So I think Jim is on pretty safe ground no matter how he chooses or has Harry explain it.

But it also doesn't rule out supernatural law(s) that might override "natural law" in some magical way(s).

No, it doesn't, but Harry saying the talent is usually passed down through the female line doesn't dispute either natural law or supernatural law from the information we have gotten so far.

It is IMO highly-possible that:
 - it doesn't actually follow the rules of "science" (it is magic, after all!)
 - it follows scientific rules, but magic-power inheritance is subtle/complex enough and hard-enough-to-study (science mixing poorly with magic) that nobody has actually put in the needed time & effort to figure it out
 - Jim hasn't actually decided on the rules, because he wants to be free to write characters however he wants/needs, and not have weird early-episode decisions get in the way of the story... or just thinks it doesn't matter.

I don't know if in the case of inheritance of talent that it can't both follow science and magic at the same time.  It gives Jim perfect freedom, which ever way he chooses or not to explain it. When a young would be wizard or warlock is described, it is said that their talent as awakened,not their magic.  Talent is the level of power they were born with, magic is what they learn.  I agree that talent is an elusive thing, while it could very well be true that talent/power is passed on by the mother.. The power level of that talent isn't predictable and is complex, lots of potential wizards are born, but truly gifted and powerful wizards are rare.  I seem to remember Thomas quoting Harry as he did a simple tracking spell that all humans are born with some talent.  Thomas is a complex example, Butters could pull off a magic circle, but I think a tracking spell is a step up.  Thomas has never claimed to have much if any talent, though I do think it isn't all that easy to pull off a tracking spell without some talent.  We know who his mother was, so you'd think he'd inherit some from her, since he used a spell to kill Margaret, Lord Raith must have talent as well... One has to wonder, just how much talent does Thomas have?