It may be that this one has given some readers the idea that, every time Guinan appears in The Hero of Three Faces as a spacetime traveler, it's really a humanoid manifestation of the Guardian of Forever like Carl on Star Trek: Discovery. That wasn't my intent, though I did draw this just after Carl's appearance in Terra Firma. Initially when I wrote this script, I was intending to put the Doctor in it as the form the Guardian's avatar takes; I don't think anyone would have mistaken my intent then. My intent here was only to offer a retcon on why the Guardian's capabilities vary from one story to the next, which had bothered me since Yesteryear aired with the new voice and the difference in operating parameters which McCoy notes here (despite that McCoy wasn't in anything like an investigative frame of mind when the Guardian was offering information in City on the Edge of Forever), and only had too fine a point put on it by its appearance as Carl on Discovery. As far as Guinan is concerned, my intent is never to make explicit how she's able to travel space, time, and fiction planes, sometimes with a companion, as easily as the Doctor or even more easily than the Doctor. That does, on the other hand, leave you the reader absolutely free to believe what you like about it, including that she really is the Guardian the whole time. Perhaps, even in her screen appearances on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Picard, Guinan always was this, the Guardian of Forever having a walkabout.