From demonic sacrifice and world-ending curses, to parental trauma and school bullying, The Owl House is a highly atypical Disney series that got away with a lot — and if you aren't a fan yet, you should be.
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00:00From demonic sacrifice and world-ending curses to parental trauma and school bullying, The
00:05Owl House is a highly atypical Disney series that got away with a lot, and if you aren't
00:10a fan yet, you should be.
00:12Luce's arrival on the Boiling Isles is anything but comforting. In the first episode, she
00:17crosses paths with the wild witch Eda Clawthorne and her demon puppy, King. Eda recruits Luce
00:22to steal a crown from a place only a human can enter. The heist goes well, right up until
00:27the warden decapitates Eda with a swipe of his axe.
00:30Ow! Oh, I hate it when that happens.
00:34It's a hell of a thing to drop on a new audience, and it certainly sets the tone for the series.
00:38Turns out, Eda can pop her limbs off at will, with no ill effects. It's never made completely
00:43clear why she has this ability, though it's proven useful, but it may be the side effect
00:48of the Owl Beast curse which affects Eda. Probably a great icebreaker at boring parties,
00:53though.
00:54Eda is quirky, but what else can go wrong with this delightful witch? Well, season one's
00:58episode four reveals she's burdened by a monstrous curse. If she doesn't take a special elixir
01:04regularly, her body contorts into a huge, owl-like beast that can't distinguish friend
01:08from foe. The curse, which was inflicted by her own sister Lilith, haunts Eda's nightmares
01:14as well.
01:15It has its own, almost cute, form that can stretch into a looming nightmare which torments
01:20Not only this, it begins to stalk Lilith's mind, too, when the sisters eventually come
01:25to share their curse. But there's a sweet upside. When Eda makes her peace with the
01:29curse, she manages to control her transformation, achieving a harpy form.
01:34The season two episode, Keeping Up Afferences, is all about family ties. It takes a look
01:39at Eda's childhood, as well as her sister Lilith, and introduces their cheerful, naive
01:44mother Gwendolyn. While most of the episode follows Gwendolyn's well-meant attempt to
01:48cure her daughter's owl-beast curse, Luz has a lot of opportunities to think about
01:52her mother, Camila. She assumes that her mom has, by now, realized that Luz is missing
01:57from summer camp. But when we see Camila crying at the end of the episode, it's only over
02:02an animal documentary. Then, someone clearly pretending to be Luz offers her a box of tissues.
02:08"...a new life. You!"
02:13A follow-up episode reveals that this fake Luz is named V, a shapeshifting basilisk
02:18with a good heart and a need for safe refuge. But until then, it's a nail-biting horror
02:22built from the real possibilities of stolen identities and fearing for the safety of our
02:27loved ones.
02:28The Boiling Isles is not exactly Tahiti. It's a sprawling magical kingdom made from the
02:32decayed corpse of a titan, a giant humanoid of unknown origins. Locations range from a
02:38mountain-like knee jutting into the sky, called The Knee, as well as Lake Lacuna, found inside
02:44the titan's ribcage. The Boiling Isles may be disturbing, but it gets worse in season
02:492. Our heroes learn more about the titans with each episode, that they are hunted for
02:54their magical blood, and that King is also one of them. Creator commentary for the episode
02:59O Titan, Where Art Thou? also makes clear what originally was only implied — the titan
03:04corpse is King's long-lost father.
03:07Amity Blight doesn't know much about the human world beyond the fantasy book series she and
03:11Luce both love, but the 1981 movie Mommy Dearest might hit a little too close to home
03:17for her. Amity's mother, Odalia, is a master of psychological destruction, and has the
03:22whole family under her thumb.
03:24What is my business is keeping our family ahead of the rest. You're welcome, everyone."
03:31In the episode Escaping Expulsion, Odalia steps onto the stage for the first time. She's
03:36so untrusting of her own daughter that she forces a magical pendant onto Amity. Like
03:41a phone tracker app on steroids, it also possesses a one-way telepathic radio so Odalia can berate
03:47Amity whenever she desires, with her daughter unable to defend herself. Due to the wealth
03:52and influence of the Blight family, there are very few people with the nerve to interfere.
03:57Fortunately for Amity, Luce's love and fearlessness to a fault antics gradually pry Amity away
04:02from Odalia's shadow. But that doesn't make Odalia's blind loyalty to Emperor Belos, the
04:08primary antagonist of the Owl House, hurt any less when her treachery is revealed in
04:13the final episodes of Season 2.
04:15No, we're not done with Odalia Blight. Like most witch families in the Boiling Isles,
04:20both Blight parents are part of a coven. While Odalia is part of the Oracle Coven, telling
04:25fortunes and manipulating the minds of others, she is married to Alador, a master in the
04:30Abomination Coven, who creates and controls golems made of purple ooze. Odalia runs the
04:36business, while shy Alador runs the research and development in their Abomination Labs.
04:40Together, they're essentially the Lockheed Martin of the Boiling Isles.
04:44The episode Escaping Expulsion shows off what the Blight family Abominations can do in a
04:48trade show display that wouldn't be out of place in the 2005 film Lord of War. Worse,
04:54they're using Luce for their targeting exercise, with Odalia slyly attempting to murder her
04:59on stage to earn a few more sales. It's tragic that even magic suffers under the weight of
05:03the military-industrial complex.
05:06Principal Bump is a jarring figure. In charge of the Hexside School of Magic and Demonics,
05:11it's up to him to keep his young students safe. At first, it may be easy to assume Bump
05:15is actually a small purple demon that's attached himself onto a human body, but scenes reveal
05:20that the demon is actually Bump's palisman, the name for a witch's animal familiar, and
05:25he's just a nice old guy that happens to use a squadron of supposedly reanimated corpses
05:29to patrol the school.
05:31And you won't tell the Emperor's Coven about this, will you?"
05:33No. Hexside School is safe for you both. I'm the principal, not a stooge."
05:38Bump's Hexside guards keep Luce's shenanigans in check. They wear upside-down masks with
05:43strange rat-like fangs, and their eyes are stitched closed with thick black thread. They
05:48wield shepherd's crooks to yank around unruly students. It may be a coincidence that those
05:52crooks resemble the ones pharaohs are buried with, but you know, and we know, they're totally
05:57zombies.
05:59Turns out the Blight family didn't corner the market on creepy automatons. In the episode
06:03Echoes of the Past, King, desperate to learn more about his origins, drags Lilith and Luce
06:09along on his search for the island where Eda found him. Lilith doubts King's memory, but
06:14King is fairly dead-on when they discover that the island does exist. King was left
06:18there as an egg by an unseen father figure, who thought far enough ahead to leave guards
06:22behind to protect the little guy.
06:24The Guardian could be something out of the Dead Space franchise. Terrifying, fleshy,
06:28fungal-like tendrils chain together smooth stone with something particularly unnerving
06:33about their head. Curved triangles with unblinking, robotic eyes. They can skitter along walls,
06:39which is guaranteed to scare nearly anybody, and can adapt their fleshy bits into weapons.
06:44Fortunately, they still answer to the pint-sized Titan, and one of the Guardians, named Jean-Luc,
06:49comes back with King to the Owl House, where he's currently deactivated.
06:53The episode Understanding Willow is chock-full of understated nightmare fuel. Willow Park
06:58is a sweet kid who used to be friends with Amity Blight, with Amity carrying a lot of
07:02shame about why they're not buds anymore. During a photography class which, in nightmarish
07:07Hexside fashion, uses snapshots of people's real memories, Willow starts getting really
07:12weird about people seeing her photos. Turns out, she hides a lot of resentment about how
07:16she is treated at Hexside, with another, much angrier Willow protecting her deepest memories.
07:22You said I was hurting Willow. I was just finishing what you started!"
07:26This comes out as Amity, in one of those, what the hell, moments, tries to burn one
07:31of Willow's sensitive memories, causing a chain reaction that rapidly changes the girl
07:35they know. To fix what she ruined, Luce drags Amity inside Willow's mind. When they get
07:41cornered by this other terrifying version of Willow, the pair has to face exactly why
07:45Willow hates Amity so much. The truth is even harsher, of course. Amity's parents forced
07:50her to stop hanging with lesser students, and Amity is still angry with herself for
07:55letting Willow down.
07:56It'd take a whole video to unpack why Bellows is such a horror show, but let's stick with
08:01some smaller nightmares. At first, details about the Emperor of the Boiling Isles are
08:05doled out slowly over the course of The Owl House, but it eventually becomes clear there's
08:09something deeply wrong with him. Like Eda, he's inflicted with some kind of curse, with
08:14a massive wound covering nearly half of his face. However, the ugliest aspect of all is
08:19what he's doing to maintain his power in the Boiling Isles. There's a running plotline
08:24about the way palacemen are dwindling from the Isles, with their source of wood becoming
08:28rarer with each passing episode.
08:30Bellows is accelerating this scarcity by using this wood to create magical golems, and by
08:35devouring the living souls of as many palacemen as possible, which somehow keeps his unstable
08:40spells working. This magical cannibalism not only wracks his body in agonized spasms every
08:46time he does it, it's also just plain ugly to watch.
08:49Wait, there's more. Long before Bellows took power, he was a 17th century guy named Philip
08:55Wittebane, a phony from the human world, secretly living the life of a witch hunter. Originally
09:00just a greedy bigot, a whack in the face from a time-traveling Lilith helped set Bellows
09:05on his path to enacting genocide. As Emperor, he would claim that mixing all types of magic
09:10was a crime against the Titan, and the new coven system he proposed was the cure.
09:15Everyone knew too much and got themselves hurt.
09:18That's why Bellows took in the survivors, and dedicated his life to making the coven system!
09:23To consolidate his rise to power, Bellows set off false flag attacks as he toured the
09:27Isles, blaming the mayhem on the wild witches that didn't submit to his false prophecies.
09:32The fear he stoked helped him take full control. Eventually, after striking a bargain with
09:37a strange being known as the Collector, he possessed the raw force needed to maintain
09:41the system, at least until Bellows finished preparing his genocide of the Boiling Isles.
09:47Emperor Bellows has plenty of loyalists on the Boiling Isles, but chief among them is
09:51the Golden Guard. Always masked and fanatically devoted, there's one at his side for most
09:56of his reign. The current Golden Guard is a kid named Hunter, who believes he's Bellows's
10:00nephew and, like Luce, doesn't have any naturally occurring magic. He clings to Bellows's
10:06promise that his servitude matters in the Titan's grand schemes, which puts him at
10:10odds with the residents of the Owl House. But he's got enough sense to begin asking
10:14himself tough questions after a while. And the answers are awful. Hunter is a construct
10:19called a Grimwalker, the latest in a long line of magical clones, all in the likeness
10:24of Bellows's deceased brother, Caleb Wittebane. It is implied that the Golden Guards before
10:28Hunter were destroyed after they betrayed Bellows, with Hunter finding out his origins
10:32in the worst way possible, during an intrusion into the Emperor's mind.
10:37Realizing that he's actually disposable nearly breaks Hunter's mind. Fortunately,
10:42he has a secret palisman and the Owl House family for support.
10:46King's Tide is the final episode of season two, and by this point, there's not much
10:50left to lose for our beloved heroes. The finale is a rollercoaster of horror, focusing on
10:54a new villain taking center stage. The Collector is Luce, and this malicious child god has
11:00no empathy for the beings he considers his toys.
11:03Luce, I'm so happy I had you as a big sister.
11:11By this episode, the Collector has been teased as a behind-the-curtain entity for a while,
11:15but when he's finally released, he turns on his former ally Bellows in a terrible way.
11:21Warped into his true form, Bellows is just about to make the human realm his, but he
11:25had betrayed the Collector in order to do it. Now bound to King, the Collector decides
11:30to play a game of tag with Bellows, ending it in one second. Bellows is gone. There's
11:36only the Collector and the very last season of The Owl House.