The Owl House S2E6-7: "Hunting Palismen" and "Eda's Requiem"
In a surprise turnaround, this second pair of episodes are what I wish all the rest of season 2 had been. Hopefully, they'll at least be what the rest of season 2 is like.
"Hunting Palismen" requires the context of at least one previous episode that wasn't commissioned. Fortunately, I happen to have seen that one on my own time, so I wasn't lost. S1E10, "Escape of the Palisman," establishes that the magic staves that adult witches carry are artificially intelligent constructs with a will of their own, and that while they are drawn toward symbiosis with wielders they are capable of evolving beyond that. The weird "bat queen" entity who played a minor role in the "Lost in Language" episode I reviewed is an example of an evolved, now free-living palisman. She sort of adopts other palismen who have been rejected by or run away from their masters, it turns out (no idea if the little bat-babies are actually her literal children, or how she even had them if so, but regardless). A later episode also establishes that palismen are created from the enchanted wood of a palistrom tree, and that those trees have gotten rarer over time due to slow growth rates and high paliswood demands.
Got that? Good. Time for S2E6 "Hunting Palismen" now.
This episode is split between Luz's POV, and an inside look at Emperor Belos' inner circle. A lot of the best episodes seem to be the ones that feature Belos and Co, I've noticed. I guess part of it is that their appearances are rare enough in the series that a lot of plot always has to happen when they show up, but part of it is also just that Big Boy B is a pretty well written and *very* well voice acted villain. Anyway, the introductory sequence makes it clear that while Belos' plans for the "day of unification" are nearing completion, his regime is also starting to fracture. With his physical health sort of acting as a barometer of that.
It's nothing that Eda or Luz did that's causing this (well, okay, their escape and the loss of Lilith, both highly public, probably did deal some damage to the regime's credibility. But that's still only a minor-ish incident in the grand scheme of things). Rather, it's the consequences of too much squeezing and too many internal contradictions just finally starting to catch up. He needs to make sure he has ALL of the witches joined into the state covens in order for the Day of Unification to work properly, but the only dissidents left at this point are the really wily and/or determined ones, and catching them is requiring police measures that the general public is starting to seriously chafe under. Likewise, the scale of his projects are such that resource depletion is starting to become an issue; the palistrom trees that the wizards' power-boosting and culturally-very-important staves are made from are now endangered, the remaining groves kept under heavy guard by the Imperial Coven. Part of this is simply the cost of arming so many soldiers and building so many experimental wood-using devices. Part of it is also, it is now revealed, because of Belos' decaying health only being preserved by the consumption of palismen. He's consuming staves more and more frequently to prevent himself from rotting, and those trees do not grow back quickly. Young witches are having to reuse old, poorly-bonding palismen instead of crafting their own new ones as per tradition, and it's making people mad.
I really like this. The show understands that successful revolutions take place when the regime is already weakened and overextended, and it's taking care to establish those conditions (and have them stem from very believable consequences of the regime's own excesses) before kicking off the big revolt that we'll presumably have at the end. This feels real in a way that most cartoon "overthrow the tyrant" plots fail to.
Ominously, part of this seems to be down to Belos no longer caring to keep up appearances with his master plan so close to fruition. A master plan that he finally reveals to the nine state coven masters, and through them the audience.
He told Luz that he wasn't planning to invade Earth, and it seems now that he was sort of telling the truth. He's planning to fuse the demon world that contains the Boiling Isles into Earth, combining them into a single realm. Why he wants to do this, and what the consequences of it might be for the inhabitants of both, are still unknown to the audience. But at least we now know the what if not the why.
Also, listening to him speak in both commanding official capacity and more quietly in one on one meetings, I'm more sure than ever that he has the same voice as Phillip Wittebane the human. He did also appear to be using something like glyph-magic during his duel with Luz in the season one finale, didn't he? Yeah, he's got to be Wittebane.
Anyway, the plot is kicked off by the new chief enforcer, that obnoxious guy who goes by "Golden Guard," being tasked with finding more palistrom wood for Belos on the down low. Implicitly, he's being ordered to steal it from someone and not let anyone link the crime to the state. Which, again, 100% on point for a crumbling regime in its final stages. Meanwhile, Luz and her classmates at Hexside are being told to adopt a discarded or runaway palisman from the Bat Queen's reserve, provided the palismen consent.
Luz, unlike the witch children, doesn't have any palisman choose her. The explanation provided being that these constructs are very goal-oriented, and Luz lacks a vision of what she actually wants to do with her magic; she's been too excited about just having it to even think that far ahead.
This prompts Luz to do some much needed introspection. Which world does she actually want to spend her life in? If she's going back to Earth, well...she's seen strong evidence that glyph magic doesn't work there at all, so she'll stop being a sorceress period (heh, I wonder how she'd feel about Belos' plan if she actually knew what it was?). All of the adventure and discovery she's done on the Boiling Islands has been, in some part of her mind, an escape. A vacation from reality. A temporary abdication of the responsibilities of growing up and figuring herself out, and even if she misses and worries for her mother at this point she's still afraid of having to end it. The palismen, it seems, can sense this.
If that introspection about her own immaturity and how she's been clinging onto it on purpose wasn't good enough, what comes next is even better. Luz gets sucked into this episode's whacky misadventure by acting like a responsible young adult-ish person. The night after the introduction, she finds a palisman that climbed into her backpack before she left school. It's not ready to bond with her and be her stave, but it apparently found her interesting at least. Luz immediately tries to bring it back to the shelter that the not-yet-bonded palismen are being temporarily kept in at the school. And, while doing that, she catches Golden Guard in the act of stealing them.
She doesn't fight him one on one because she wants to, or because she was too impulsive to get anyone else. Rather, she does it because his getaway vehicle has taken off with her aboard it before she even realized what was going on, and her body language suggests that this time she really WAS about to do the responsible thing and run for backup until she was prevented.
So, she fights him. And she fights pretty fucking smart, using the element of surprise, trying to separate him from his stave to weaken him, and using glyph-spells she knows he's unlikely to have seen anything like. She does impressively well. However, their battle is cut short by a sudden monster attack that downs the airship over the wilderness and strands them far from civilization.
Once again in keeping with the pattern of authoritarianism in decline, deadly rivalries are starting to break out among Belos' underlings. One of Golden Guard's rivals within the regime sent a monster to shoot him down and kill him when he's doing a solo black ops mission without witnesses, and (ideally) be the one to find his body and complete his mission for him to get extra brownie points on top of it.
He survives the crash and avoids the hunters in part due to Luz's assistance. She realizes that neither of them can survive this situation alone, and he (very begrudgingly) is made to realize it too.
Also, it turns out that he's only a couple of years older than Luz and her classmates.
Definitely fits his personality. And also explains why Belos' old guard lieutenants would resent him.
As they evade the hunters and argue over what to do with the palismen (Luz wants to return them to the school. Golden Guard wants to bring them to Belos, but he'd still rather Luz get them than his treacherous rival), the two learn about each other. It turns out that Golden Guard, proper name Hunter, is a distant relative of the emperor's (huh, wonder if that's blood relation or just by adoption?) and was given his status despite being a rare warlock born without innate spellcasting ability; without staves or other tools, he can't use his magic at all. It's sort of an embarrassing deformity, within Boiling Isles society. Thus, he had virtually no choice OTHER than to accept Belos' offer of induction into the Imperial Coven using state-provided spellcasting aides. His enthusiasm for the job is born of both earnest gratitude, and the haunting knowledge that without this he'd have nothing at all. He never thought he had the freedom to doubt.
The climax of the episode comes when the mastermind behind Hunter's attempted assassination catches up to them in person, and - in an extremely risky display of trust - Luz returns Hunter's own palisman to him so that he can fight.
He nearly betrays her, but stops himself at the very last moment. Letting Luz return the stolen palismen before anyone else even realizes they were gone. Thus failing his mission, but at least not implicating the state in criminal activities.
The episode's denouement shows Hunter getting chewed out by Belos, and also having to pretend everything is fine between himself and the official who just tried to murder him at the office the next morning (their battle was cut short, leaving them both very awkwardly alive). He's realizing how little Belos' "favor" really means, when he uses him as a tool and surrounds himself with people who are murderously ableist toward people like Hunter (it's not explicit that this was part of the motive, but it's pretty heavily implied). Meanwhile, Luz is gifted a log of fresh-cut palistrom wood that Eda just stole from the state grove.
She can carve her own damned palisman that suits her by design, just like everyone used to do. A perfect metaphor for her deciding to finally grow up and stop expecting other people to take care of her and clean up after her constant careless acts. And also for outgrowing the proscribed limitations that have haunted her in both worlds, and mirroring Hunter's own face-turn-in-progress.
Actually...it's also another step along the path of Luz and Eda reinventing witchcraft from first principles, now that I think about it. Cool.
Strong contender for the best episode of "The Owl House" so far. This is what I've been wanting the show to be, and this is the Luz I've wanted it to star. It's not even that she was smart and competent, per se (though she very much was! She pulls off some absolutely brilliant tactics and solutions in this episode). It's that she was mature, self-aware, and doing her earnest best to be responsible. Cognizant of her flaws, and striving to be better than them.
The following episode, "Eda's Requiem," is almost as good. It's a bit hard to compare, though, because this one is a character study of Eda that shows the world and the characters from a different angle than the one we're used to. That said, it also picks up some threads from "Hunting Palisman" and continues to build on the strength of that episode's worldbuilding and plot advancement.
With Lilith's departure from the Owl House, Luz pining more and more vocally for her home and family, and even King now starting to make some noises about wanting to go look for his father, Eda is having a bit of a breakdown. She spent decades getting used to living alone and convincing herself she liked it, but the last few months have stripped all that armor away, and now she's terrified of being left alone again.
Refreshingly, she doesn't act on this in a way that would make me hate her. I was getting really sick of every character doing that all the time, and now it's not happening anymore, and I'm happy! She remains supportive of everyone through gritted teeth, just indulges in some pitiful avoidance to keep herself sane. The fact that the last two people leaving her are both children that she needs to be strong for and not burden with her own emotions, and that she doesn't really have anyone else to turn to for help right now, is communicated with painful fidelity.
The plot arrives in the form of an old flame, Raine Whispers, who has just been promoted to the head of one of the state covens. They were one of the officials getting the Day of Unification exposition from Belos last episode. And, it turns out, they're also a deep-cover revolutionary who's just been waiting to get enough official power to cover their cell's activities. Now that Raine is the head of the music-monopolizing Bard Coven, their crew are able to commit some crimes.
Eda's magic barely works anymore, but she still has her wits, her whiles, and her experience. She makes a vital addition to the cell, helping them free dissidents from arrest in Belos' intensifying crackdowns and shepherding them to resistance camps in the wilderness. Her old youthful romance with Raine starts to show vestiges of regrowth.
Turns out Eda used to be quite the musician herself, before the curse that essentially ended the life she thought she would have.
Before long though, the group gets lured into an ambush by elite imperial bounty hunters. Surrounded, outnumbered, and with Eda heavily de-powered, her and Raine decide to make a suicidal attack against the enemy. Using a quirk of her corrupted magic, combined with Raine's bard powers, to hopefully kill all witches currently engaged in spellcasting in their immediate area, themselves included.
That is, until a photograph of Luz and King happens to slip out of Eda's pocket, and Raine realizes that - unlike themself - Eda has children. Not biologically, sure, but still. Children for whom she's the only kind of parent that currently exists. She insists that they don't need her anymore, they're preparing to leave her anyway, but Raine insists that they'll need her now more than ever to lean on as they try to make it in the world.
She tearfully relents. Fleeing the battle and aborting the suicide attack, allowing Raine to be captured while she escapes back to Luz and King, wishing harder that she were dead with every step. Coming back to them, though, she discovers that wherever Luz ends up living, she's not leaving anytime soon. And even if she does, she never wants to stop being friends with Eda.
As for King, he never actually meant that he wanted to leave the Owl House to search for his people. He was talking about trying some media outreach, via vlogs and social media. Which Eda is happy to help him with. And, to my surprise, we get a split second glimpse of this:
Huuuhhhhhhh.
Looks like I was wrong about who and what King's father is. Or maybe not? This might be another, not yet fully grown, titan. An older sibling, perhaps. Or maybe I was totally wrong and the resemblance to the dead titan was just a red herring. Well, anyway, there's someone who is related to or at the very least the same species as King who sees his outreach, and will presumably be reaching out in the coming episodes. I'm definitely interested to see where that goes.
Throughout both these episodes, there's also a running background subplot about Luz slowly coaxing more of Wittebane's journal out of that rat creature.
It can only replay a little bit at a time, and only when sufficiently relaxed and comfortable. Which is a decently clever way for the writers to stagger the information throughout multiple episodes and avoid big infodumps. And (I suspect) to keep the Belos revelation from Luz until it's dramatically appropriate. It works for me.
No further hints about the doppelganger taking Luz's place on Earth. I guess that's a problem we'll have to deal with later.
Excellent, well-paced, well-plotted, and emotionally moving pair of episodes. It took a while, but this show's reputation is starting to really justify itself for me.
