Alternative Character Interpretation: Some fans think Mistystar's increasingly nonsensical actions are caused by her having dementia in her old age, just like her mother.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Snowtuft became wildly popular with the fanbase within days of The Place of No Stars dropping. Formerly a background Dark Forest villain, he aids the protagonists because he wants no part in Ashfur's plans, which in itself would be enough to catch interest. But add in his characterization as someone scared of the situation but still hoping to redeem himself, sprinkle in tidbits of backstory, and pour out a cup of tragedy with his amnesia, and the result is a character fans adore and are clamoring to be redeemed and go to StarClan.
Epileptic Trees: When the blurbs for Lost Stars and The Silent Thaw were released, fans began theorizing that Bramblestar had gotten rabies due to the blurbs describing him as acting strangely after losing one of his nine lives. This was jossed with the release of The Silent Thaw, where something quite different is happening.
I Knew It!: Many fans speculated that Ashfur was the impostor and that Mapleshade would return at some point. In both cases, they were correct!
Love to Hate: The impostor, aka Ashfur. Unlike many Warriors antagonists, he has neither tyrannical goals, nor noble intentions, nor shades of gray; he's simply a delusional, selfish Yandere willing to destroy all the Clans in his pursuit of Squirrelflight because he was still pissed about her not becoming his mate years ago. And yet, the sheer pettiness of that, the horror undertones from hispowers, and him being considerably more cunning and dangerous make him truly frightening. The common fan reaction is "he's despicable as a person, but he's a great villain".
Realism-Induced Horror: Despite the horror in this arc mostly being supernatural in origin, the impostor's interactions with Bristlefrost and especially Shadowsight call to mind uncomfortable stories of grooming and abuse.
Bristlefrost, a hard-working new warrior (the human equivalent would be a graduate just entering the working world), is approached by her leader. He publicly showers her with praise and special duties, earning her trust and taking her into his confidence, before he privately pressures her to betray the confidence of her fellow warriors. She reluctantly does so, which earns her the reputation as The Quisling and causes her peers, friends, and family to shun her, leaving her with no emotional support. She is then thrust into a position of authority she is unable to handle, has not earned, and does not want, but cannot leave without endangering herself, as her leader threatens to kill her should she ever turn out to be disloyal.
Shadowpaw, a young, impressionable apprentice (the human equivalent of a teenager) is contacted secretly by someone who he believes to be a trusted authority figure. The figure praises him as special and tries to coax him into helping him in ways that make Shadowpaw uncomfortable. When he seeks advice from his peers and parents, they either don't believe him because of his youth or mistakenly give advice that makes him more dependent on the figure. When he has outlived his usefulness, the figure tries to kill him. Once the figure is injured and imprisoned, Shadowsight's parents and leader force him to visit and take care of him as "atonement" for "helping" him in the first place. Said association isolates him from his peers, who mistake Shadowsight as wanting to be around the figure. Throughout these visits, the figure keeps up a stream of emotional abuse, praising Shadowsight and calling him a friend in one second and then belittling him the next, until he eventually tricks Shadowsight into freeing him. The last book reveals that the connections and seizures which had plagued Shadowsight all his life came from a connection with said figure, which gives the very disturbing impression that Ashfur set his sights on him as far back as his childhood.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: They were more base-breakers than outright scrappies, but Tigerstar II and Dovewing's romance drama was lambasted for dragging out far, far longer than it had to. Now that it's finally over, they show themselves to be pretty awesome mates and parents in this arc, causing some to look more favorably on them and their relationship.
The Scrappy: Mistystar, due to her unreasonableness, hypocrisy, and downright meanness. She goes along with the impostor's orders to exile codebreakers, even though she herself is the product of codebreaking and has experienced prejudice due to that. While she is desperate due to her Clan's suffering, the way Harestar is, Harestar immediately overrules his previous decision once he learns about the impostor; Mistystar actually continues to exile cats even after learning the truth. Suffice to say, fans loathed her after Veil of Shadows.
Strangled by the Red String: Rootspring's feelings for Bristlefrost are built up well, as he nurtures a crush on her for three books, but there aren't any major hints she considers him a romantic prospect until her abrupt confession near the end of Veil of Shadows. And yet, they were genuine friends before then, they have good romantic chemistry in Darkness Within, and they actually discuss their relationship with maturity, so their relationship comes across as believable and sweet, especially compared to the franchise's previous examples of Star-Crossed Lovers.
Darktail, the Big Bad from the last arc, returns as a spirit to fight alongside Ashfur in A Light in the Mist...and is promptly killed Deader than Deada few pages later after doing nothing, leaving fans wondering what the point of bringing him back in the first place was.
After being built up for a redemption arc and possible lore-shaking switch to StarClan in The Place of No Stars, fan-favorite Snowtuft is killed off-screen in the first few chapters of A Light of the Mist. Adding insult to injury is that the redemption arc is passed off to Juniperclaw (who already had a redemption) of all cats.
Out of all the Dark Forest cats fans expected to show up again, Snowtuft was nowhere near the top of the list, much less the list for possible redemption arcs. But boy, did the audience dig it.
Even lower on that list was Silverhawk. Prior to The Place of No Stars, he was literally mentioned once in the entire franchise, to the point people believed he was yet another instance of Series Continuity Error. They were pleasantly surprised when he popped up as one of Ashfur's lackeys.
And lower still on the list of antagonistic cats people expected to return was the spirit of Darktail, the antagonist of the previous arc who was presumed to be Deader than Dead due to his status as a rogue at the time of his death. Granted, he only lasts a few pages before being Killed Off for Real, but it still caught many fans off-guard.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: StarClan has been gradually sliding down to this over the franchise, due to fans being irritated with how they act like deities when they're just dead cats, but it reached a breaking point in A Light in the Mist. They reveal they refused to let Juniperclaw into StarClan because he broke the code and being sorry at his death wasn't enough, even though they have let in cats like Mudclaw for the exact same thing. They criticize and condemn Juniperclaw and the Dark Forest cats who want to redeem themselves, saying redemption isn't possible, when atoners like Needletail and Skystar are in their ranks. They proclaim the code is the most important thing, when the whole arc was about showing the weaknesses in the code and how it can be exploited. But the nail in the coffin is that they say all this after letting in Ashfur, a mistake so monumental it caused the entire events of this arc, a mistake that shows their judgment is not nearly as perfect as they'd like to pretend—yet this flaw and their double standards are ignored by the narrative, suggesting readers are supposed to find them in the right. Taken all together, they come across as judgmental, self-righteous, and hypocritical instead of the wise ancestor guides they're supposed to be.
