The Owl House S1E18-19: "A Witch's Anguish" and "Young Blood, Old Souls"
This review was commissioned by @Aris Katsaris.
The end of "The Owl House's" first season isn't just a major transition for the series' plot, but also its structure. TOH was originally intended to have four seasons, with the first, shorter, lighter-hearted one essentially serving as an intro and prologue to the later three. Season 2 and beyond were to be the actual story that the creators wanted to tell.
Unfortunately, Disney decided it was too gay, and cancelled it after the second season. The creators were permitted to release a "third season" that consisted of three, forty-five minute length specials to finish things off. Meaning that we only ever got one full season of what "The Owl House" was really meant to be.
In this post, I'll be finishing off the intro season. In the next, I'll get my first look at what this was all intended to serve.
Also, for the sake of disclosure: I've seen a bunch more episodes from earlier in the season now, courtesy of my wife taking an interest in the show. I haven't seen anything ahead of this point, but I've seen a lot more of what leads up to it, so I have more context for what I say in this review than I did in the previous ones.
Also also: the first half or so of this post is going to be a bit harsh, because a bunch of my annoyances with the show kind of come to a head in the first half of "A Witch's Anguish." My impression of these episodes is overall positive, so I just wanted to make sure you don't get the sense I hated them.
"A Witch's Anguish" brings three of the Damacles swords that have been hanging over the story's head swinging down. A few previous episodes included indications that Eda's owlbear curse has been getting harder to control and requiring her to take more and more of the potion. Likewise, we know that Lilith is starting to run out of patience for her sister (or, perhaps more accurately, Lilith's superiors are starting to run out of patience for her leniency toward her sister). Finally, we know that Luz is a reckless moron who never learns no matter how many times her actions hurt herself and people she claims to care about, and that sooner or later she'd fuck someone over in a way that can't be undone. Well, time for a one-two-three punch!
After a failed attack on the Owl House itself (in which Hooty turns out to be an incredibly powerful war machine in addition to whiny, needy, and annoying), a frustrated Lilith wishes that her sister had family or friends to get at her through. Meanwhile, Eda is needing to use more and more of her magic to keep the curse from overtaking her, even with the ever-increasing potion dosages. And then, while worrying over Eda's condition, Luz is told that her Hexside School class is going on a field trip to Emperor Belos' royal palace, where they'll get to see sights that include his collection of legendary magical artifacts. Including a hat that has the power to lift any and all curses from its wearer.
Eda isn't in the best shape right now, but Luz can still benefit from her knowledge and experience to make a plan of attack, and potentially arm herself with some choice pieces from Eda's own collection of magic items. So, Luz asks Eda for everything she knows about the imperial palace's defences, as well as any details of the hat itself that might come in handy while trying to make off with ithahahahHAHAHAHA she just tries to grab it on the field trip without even telling Eda that the class is going there.
Lilith has just returned in frustration and disgrace to the palace, and just been warned by the emperor that she's on very thin ice herself at this point, when the field trip passes through and Luz tries to steal the hat. Willow and Gus help her, naturally. Amity is unfortunately home with an injured foot and had to miss out on the trip, or else she probably would have either helped too or (more likely) talked the others out of this idiocy.
I'm guessing the foot thing happened in the previous episode, heh.
There's some really brilliant visual comedy as the three of them sneak away from the tour group and use various mundane and magical shenanigans to sneak past the hilariously inept guards. But, then they set off the alarm after grabbing the hat (and stupidly playing with the other displayed artifacts), and Lilith is just a few rooms away and eager to make a successful arrest today. Her mood improves considerably when she realizes who one of the arrestees is.
And, here we get to an issue with the plot, setting, and how the show wants each of those to be engaged with.
...
We get a lot of worldbuilding in this episode, particularly as it regards Boiling Islands history and the nature of its current regime.
The better part of a century ago, an extremely powerful wizard of mysterious origins started preaching against the wickedness of witch society. Belos claimed to have been empowered by the spirit of the Titan, the entity whose gigantic corpse makes up the islands themselves, and whose power is the ultimate source of all of the witches' magic. Apparently, practicing magic freely and recklessly enraged the titan, and it sent Belos to make its will law among those who would exploit its power. Ffity years before the present, Belos' fanatical sect violently subjugated the islands, forced witchkind into the magic-limiting coven system, and turned dissenters into persecuted noncitizens. The conquest was only completed a mere fifty years ago, but already the population (or at least, the youngest generation of it) has been propagandized into referring to the preceding era as the "savage ages."
Most of this information is relayed to us through Gus and Willow's mostly-credulous narration, over a series of grand pictographs displayed throughout the palace.
So, Belos is a priest-king. The imperial coven aren't just a privileged police class, they're also something along the lines of an inquisition. The state religion has been in place long enough for significant entrenchment, especially among the young.
And yet...Lilith has to luck into Luz in the active process of committing a crime in order to take her hostage? She's been trying to pressure Eda into joining for this whole season, even before she had her arm twisted into using force. And, at no point in that season did it occur to her that she could use Luz to apply said pressure?
Furthermore, this context makes Eda out to be the worst kind of heretic, a person whose actions are an active affront to her people's god. Even if a large percentage of the islanders don't really believe Belos' story and are just grudgingly complying with his laws, another significant percentage must consist of that fanatical cult who fought for him in the first place. And yet, everyone seems to treat Eda like...a petty thief? A medium-league tax fraudster? Something along those lines. She's able to openly say who she is, and walk around major towns while doing so, and most people just shrug and mumble about how she's probably going to get in trouble again sooner or later. There are rare moments where the show remembers that Eda isn't supposed to be seen as herself in public, but they are *rare* ones.
I find the creator's statement that "season 2 is what she really wanted the show to be" very informative, in light of how this finale ends. To jump ahead a little bit, this two-parter leaves off with Eda and Luz as *actual* outcasts and fugitives, rather than Eda just saying they are. There was probably pressure from Disney to lighten and soften the pitch up, at least until the show proved itself, so season one ended up as this nonsensical compromise where Eda is simultaneously a hunted heretic within a violently oppressive theocracy, and a smalltown ne'er-do-well who most people grudgingly like.
...
Anyway, those are most of my complaints about this two-parter. Mostly about things clustered in the first half of the first episode. The tone of this post will be considerably more positive going forward.
Lilith captures Luz, and sends the other two back to Eda with the news. And thus, despite her magic-strained state, Eda goes to pay her sister a visit near the imperial palace. By the way, the palace is a pretty damned impressive villain fortress.
And, speaking of impressive, this battle between the Clawthorne sisters over a forcefield-imprisoned Luz makes it clear how unserious their previous duel at the school actually was.
Full on landscape-remodeling, animoo flash-stepping, pyrotechnic chaos. Not just bigger explosions, but faster speed, more desperate blocks and counterattacks, a level of *aggression* that was just barely hinted at last time.
Even with her magic already strained, Eda would have won this battle were it not for Lilith's willingness to use Luz as a literal human shield to discourage her biggest attacks. And even then, Lilith only wins when Eda's curse catches up with her and she loses her spellcasting ability and intelligence. And, during the final stages of the battle, Lilith finally snaps and reveals just how big of a lie her "reasonable, longsuffering good twin" schtick really was.
She's the one who put the curse on her sister when they were teenagers, and she knew that Eda's superior power would see her chosen for the imperial coven over Lilith.
It was an illegal, black-market curse she got from some shady merchant, and she ended up underestimating it. She was only intending to put her sister temporarily out of commission. But no. Lifelong, irreversible, only suppressible and not even that reliably. And it turns out that Eda had been about to back out of the running anyway, due to her having second thoughts about wanting to be one of the regime's enforcers. Not that Lilith ever came clean to her or anyone else. Or used her power within the Imperial Coven to arrange access to the anti-curse hat. Or done any of the many other things she could have done to reduce the severity of the condition at her own expense (we see literal examples of this by the end of the two-parter).
So. Yeah. Her reluctance to arrest Eda is just half-assed compensation for massive guilt.
Another big surprise comes in "Young Blood, Old Souls," when Luz - after being haplessly discarded in the wake of Eda's capture - is contacted again by Lilith. This time in unofficial capacity, after Belos tells Lilith that he's planning to simply execute Eda rather than curing her curse and making a millionth attempt at talking her over. That was finally enough to get Lilith to turn against Belos, albeit still only clandestinely. So, despite her immense reluctance, Luz ends up making a rescue attempt with Lilith. And, it turns out that Luz is *incredibly powerful* at this point.
Not having an internal magic supply and being entirely dependent on ambient forces means that "her" mana bar never runs out. If she's prepared her glyphs ahead of time, she can cast spells as quickly as she can pull out the scraps of paper, and she can do that fast.
On the other hand, there's also a brief scene during Lilith's sort-of face turn where Luz and Lilith knock each other through Eda's portal into the human world. And, over here, Lilith's magic works, but Luz's doesn't at all. Meaning that nothing Luz has learned will be usable after she returns to her family at the end of the summer. Sad, that.
Anyway, the real high points of these two episodes are Emperor Belos' scenes. We've been building up to this guy since the pilot, and he does not disappoint.
In keeping with the show's family resemblances, Belos is cut from the same cloth (both visually and in personality) as the Beast from "Over the Garden Wall" and the Nowhere King from "Centaurworld," with all of the above having a bit of "Adventure Time's" lich in them. The antler-like horns, the skeletal visage, the deep, slow, deliberate voice, the confidence backed up by measured displays of magical power. There are also indications that he might be an actual skeleton under that mask; like Eda, he apparently needs to take some kind of potion, but unlike her he pours it in his mask's eye-holes rather than drinking it.
Securing his reign and eliminating dissidents also aren't the extent of his ambitions (or "the titan's ambitions," as he insists). He's preparing for some kind of event called "the Day of Unity," and he also - now that he's captured Eda - would very much like to get his hands on her method of traveling to Earth (he says that it's not for anything as banal as conquest, but he's also told many bald-faced lies before this point in the episode, so). The key happens to be hidden in Eda's staff, which she was able to entrust to Luz before transforming and being captured. And, when he tries to get it from Luz during the rescue, Luz's original-brand runic magic takes him by such surprise with its sheer speed and consistency of power that she's actually able to crack his helmet.
He starts taking the fight seriously after that, of course. And Luz doesn't last long once he does. But still, that has to have given him a scare, and demonstrated to Luz that her rediscovered type of magic might just be his Achilles Heel if she can develop it further.
Luz's real high point in this episode is doing something legitimately smart and consequence-aware, when she agrees to hand over the portal key in exchange for a chance to free Eda and Lilith from the death trap they're stuck in...only to then remotely destroy the key with an incendiary glyph she secretly attached to it. Leaving Belos with a handful of useless burning splinters while Luz and the Cawthorne sisters are able to flee.
The episode ends with Lilith - at long overdue last - using a damage-sharing spell she knows to split Eda's curse between the two of themselves. Leaving both of them weakened, but humanoid.
Learning magic Luz's way might be a neccessity for all three of them, now. And they'll have much more time to do it, now that Luz's way home has been destroyed and her summer plans have just been extended for potentially years. Her mother will simply have to mourn her in the meantime; there's no way of even getting a message back for the meantime.
Damn, now that part of the show's premise took a dark turn, didn't it?
So. On the run. Eda weakened. Lilith...also weakened, but given how untrustworthy she is that's probably a good thing on balance. Luz finally gets to be the chosen one of her dreams, but it's not off to the start she wanted it to be off to. Her unresolved guilt at lying to her mother has just been blown up into something much, much worse. Her understanding that Eda only ever needed rescuing because of Luz's own refusal to stop being impulsive and reckless is (satisfyingly! It took long enough, but the show is finally starting to actually call Luz out on her shit) clear.
Next time, the first few episodes of season 2. I'll probably do a bit more retrospective analysis of these two eps once I see what they're leading into.
