The Owl House S2E8: Knock Knock Knockin' on Hooty's Door

This review was commissioned by Aris Katsaris.


In this complicated episode, Hooty fails at failing.

Or...more like he fails so hard he breaks back through the side of the spacetime continuum into the realm of success. And then, after having done that, fails at something else.

Anyway, this episode has some major plot twists and revelations in it. The choice to have them come about in an episode narrated by Hooty as he fails to understand any of the discoveries he's bumbled into allowing the other characters to make is honestly a pretty inspired one. It allows the show to hit both of its tonal extremes without them getting in each other's way. Honestly, despite it having an unusual structure and narration for the series, I'd point to "Knock Knock Knockin' on Hooty's Door" as an encapsulation of what "The Owl House" is and does.

Or at least, what it is and does at its best. Happily, this episode does all of the above while at least mostly avoiding the aspects of the series that annoy me.


The episode is framed by Hooty writing a letter to Lilith. That's the first thing that this episode does right; remind me that Lilith isn't around anymore. Anyway, Hooty has been continuing to vent to Lilith about how unimportant he feels via mail, and in her most recent reply she pointed out that acknowledged or otherwise he really does play an important role.

This inspired him to take more pride in his job and play an active role in aiding his inhabitants. He's now writing back to her to report on his brilliant success.

Three subplots ensue, in which Hooty attempts to "help" Eda, Luz, and King attain their goals. I'll start with King, who's pretty much given up on his father ever coming for him, but still wants to figure out something about what he is and where he came from...especially now that he seems to be verging on his species' version of adolescence. So, Hooty grabs him (by swallowing him and depositing him in the basement encased in an owl pellet. Of course) and repurposes King's old demonology classroom into a demon research center. The experiments he armtwists King into participating in mostly just hurt, frustrate, or annoy him, but the episode uses this device to teach us some (frankly, long overdue) basics about what demons are and how they're related to each other.

Whereas witches are heavily implied to be descendent from humans who travelled to the Boiling Isles and evolved to harness their magic, the demons arose from the decomposing muck that sloughed off of the titan's corpse. Perhaps this was a case of spontaneous generation, or perhaps they were mutated from preexisting organisms inside its body or in the water around its resting place, unclear. Anyway, there are three major branches of demonkind: insectoids, beasts, and humanoids. The insectoids all, without exception, share an ability to communicate via an intuitive kind of interpretive dance. The humanoids are all bipedal, social, and able to practice magic just like the witches (they even have the bile sacks next to their hearts. Suggesting that this branch of demonkind's physiology may have either influenced or been influenced by the early witches). Finally, the beasts are highly diverse, but share certain blood chemistry markers that the other types of demon lack.

I have trouble believing that King didn't already pursue all of these leads during his years with Eda, but whatever, it's good that we're at least learning this stuff now!

Predictably, King - despite having many superficial traits in common with certain demon species - turns out to lack any of these taxonomical indicators. And the tests all accidentally hurt and/or humiliate him, because it's Hooty.

In the end, Hooty tries to cheer him up by throwing a party to celebrate how unique and special King is, which was of course the exact wrong thing to do. Driven to despair, King lets out a scream of fury...that in turn triggers an energy cascade that excites small objects all around them.

Very reminiscent of the earth-shaking, seemingly telepathy-adjacent paternal roar he remembers from his hatching.

Apparently, getting him upset enough while he's at this specific point in his growth and development spurred King to first show some of his people's innate powers. Leading him one step closer to figuring out who and what they are and if there are any others of them still around.

...

Once again, this seems to be hinting at a connection between King and the titan. With him having superficially demonlike traits but not being one, while the demons in turn are suggested to have absorbed some traits from the titan they grew on, well...it would make sense if the demons are all just immitating traits from King's species.

On the other hand, we DID see that apparent adult of King's species at the end of the last episode, and it definitely wasn't titan-sized, so...yeah, I don't know.

I feel like there's still one missing piece that would make all these things click together.

...

Also, on a side note, Hooty himself is actually part of the insectoid family. Superficially avian traits on a vermiform house-infesting borer. I can see it.

Next, Luz. Luz has got two things on her mind right now, and her divided attention is sabotaging both. Her attempts to get the bookmouse to replay the rest of Phillip Wittebane's journal, and her crush on Amity that the two of them are apparently still not open about. The latter being something that has annoyed me due to persisting past multiple logical resolution points, but I'm not going to hold it against this episode, because this is the one where we finally DO resolve it!

Hooty isn't sure how to help with the bookmouse, but he is sure he knows how to help with the crush. Namely, by attacking Amity when she happens to be not-too-far from the owl house, ingesting her, and owl-pellet-depositing her in the basement, where he eventually alerts Luz to her presence.

By slipping this letter under the door of Luz's guestroom:

Luz rescues Amity, only for the two of them to be dropped through the floor into a sub-basement that Hooty has apparently just grown. He apparently gives the building he's connected to some TaRDiS-like traits, which has been hinted at before but not actually confirmed until now. Anyway, the new space he's made for this purpose looks like this:

Luz wants to die of embarrassment. Amity probably thinks she's already dead and this is the last few wild flashes of her cooling neurons before they go out forever.

Amity actually kinda likes this. Which surprises me a bit, given the abduction and all, but maybe witch amusement parks just never quite stumbled into the "tunnel of love" concept and it's a novelty. Anyway, it's clear that Luz *could* have leveraged this into something successful, but Luz is too embarrassed and apologetic to say anything but "this is Hooty's deranged scheme, he's shipping us for some reason," and Amity then takes that at face value.

The resolution of this arc comes at the end of the episode, when Hooty is despairing at having failed so miserably at helping them, and so Amity and Luz declare that they're going out now within earshot of him just to make him stop trying to pry himself free from the damned building. Which then results in them realizing that the other are also serious about this, and finally plucking this overripe will-they-won't-they for good.

Now that things aren't awkward between them any longer, Amity is able to also help Luz coax the mouse into releasing its data. So, the next couple of episodes should have Luz start following Phillip "probably Belos" Wittebane's leads.

As for Eda, now.

Eda's been struggling to keep herself awake to attack her research, regarding both how to regain her magic and what Belos is getting up to with this whole "Day of Unification" hubbub.

She's clearly overworking herself, which is only going to make her owl-curse act up, so Hooty thoughtfully gives her some cookies laced with sleeping drugs without her knowledge or consent.

...

Lilith's been rubbing off on you, hasn't she, Hooty? Yeah, she has.

...

Before passing out, Eda fearfully exclaims that she recognizes the potion he snuck to her, and that it happens to cause hyperactive and realistic dreaming as well as sleep. Which means she's going to be spending the next few hours being tormented by the owl-demon in a realer-than-real virtual prison. Hooty's horrified reaction to this news comes as she faceplants unconscious.

And, in Eda's dreams, both the audience and Eda herself learn a great deal.

Eda's been sitting on the sheer extent to which the owl-curse ruined the Clawthorne family from top to bottom. For instance, we haven't seen her father in the present day, but in a dream-flashback we learn that an early bout of his daughter's owlbearism either severely injured him or killed him. It's not explicit which. He lost an eye at the very least.

Whether or not he survived this incident, it's clear that he wasn't in his daughter's life after it. Eda's curse either killed her father, or effectively killed his fatherhood of her. She's never breathed a word about that, even in Eda's earlier backstory centric episodes.

Notably, Lilith has never breathed a word about it either.

Have I mentioned recently how much I hate Lilith?

Flashing forward some years, we also learn that the owl curse was at least a major factor in the failure of Eda's relationship with Raine Whispers, with whom she may have actually been hoping to spend her life.

Once again, she's downplayed just how much she lost with Raine when the subject came up previously. To Luz, and also to Raine themselves during their brief reunion a couple episodes back.

This montage of personal tragedy, helplessness, and ostracism, of the life that was stolen from her - that's never stopped being actively stolen from her, every minute of every day - psychs Eda up into a lucid dreaming fury. Perhaps, if her mind is the owlbear's realm, then this is where and how she'll need to fight it. And hope that she can kill it, or that it kills her if she can't.

I'd have settled for killing her sister, personally, but Eda is Eda and I'm me.

During her dream-battle with the owlbear, something weird happens. A wire gets crossed in their soulforms. Eda slips into another dream, reliving another memory, but this time it isn't hers.

Things get weird and artsy-looking in this sequence. It's hard to say how much of what we're seeing is visual metaphor, and how much is literal. The owlbear doesn't seem to preserve memories in quite the same form that humans and witches do, but it's not incomprehensible.

In an older, more barren-looking version of the Boiling Isles, the owlbear was attacked by a cackling, gigantic figure with star-covered robes and the crescent moon for its face.

A metaphorical depiction of alien invaders, hence the celestial elements? A literal memory of a god of the night sky? Who knows.

The moon-thing tries to capture the owlbear in chains of pure magical force. It barely escapes, only for a burning light from the sun to sear its wings away and cause it to plummet down into the boiling ocean. It hits the water, sinks below the surface, and becomes a scroll encased in a magical bubble.

It eventually washes up on the shore, where it is found by a junk dealer. Presumably, they misidentify it as a curse-scroll and sell it to a hex dealer, who in turn eventually sells it to a teenaged Lilith Clawthorne.

Then, Eda and the owlbear are on a mute, grayscale shoreline, tied together at the ankle. Both trying to pull free of each other. Neither able to succeed.

When droplets of golden liquid wash in from the sea, the owlbear looks slightly less miserable and hastens to drink them. Eda recognizes the liquid, the potion, her medicine.

It doesn't suppress the owlbear. It pacifies the owlbear. That's what it's actually been doing this entire time.

It doesn't seem able to speak or understand spoken words, but Eda manages to communicate to the creature that she doesn't actually hate it. She didn't understand who or what it was until now. She wants to free it, just as she wishes to free herself. Finally, after decades of forced symbiosis, the owlbear-spirit stops thinking of Eda as an opponent it needs to defeat to get free, and Eda does likewise.

When she wakes up, she's gained the ability to turn into a highly strong and mobile harpy-like form at will, during which she retains full self control. It's implied that the involuntary rage-shapeshifting might now be a thing of the past.

Very "Katalepsis," heh.

...we also have a gay fish-out-of-water girl protagonist, a grumpy mentor with a debilitating condition, and a character named Raine. And god-corpses the size of landmasses that can still be tapped for power.

Pretty sure it's just coincidence, but it's amusing coincidence.

Anyway. Eda doesn't have her magic back yet, as far as the episode shows, but this definitely seems like a step in the right direction.

...

You know, the whole cursing of Eda is starting to seem awfully contrived. There's this mysterious one-of-a-kind "curse" of unknown origins, and the guy sells it to this random teenager for seemingly a low price? And...Lilith bought the mystery box curse to use on her sister, despite not intending for it to be permanent or life threatening?

I just can't understand why Lilith would have bought THAT curse. Or why the merchant would have lied and said this one was the kind Lilith wanted. Surely, he could find a better buyer for a unique curiosity like this, no?

Oh well.

...

The episode ends with Hooty concluding his letter to Lilith, bragging about how much he helped everyone with their problems with her encouragement. When he goes to mail it though, he stumbles into a stranger at Eda's mailbox.

Oh shit, he actually responded to the internet outreach pretty fast!

This older member of King's species - I'm not willing to assume it's a close family member without more evidence, but definitely one of their people - had been about to drop off a letter for King. Since the house-demon is here though, he decides to just hand it to Hooty with instructions to give it to him. Which Hooty promptly forgets about when he sees an insect crawl across the envelope, and swallows it along with the bug.

-___-

God fucking damnit, worm-thing.

This episode has reminded us twice over that anything Hooty swallows will get owl-pelleted in the basement, so the letter will still be there. Just, King isn't going to know that it's there until and unless Hooty remembers.

What a cocktease by the creators lol. Like, they totally knew that King's origins are the most interesting mystery they've raised so far, and ended this episode the way they did just to fuck with their fans.


So, we learned things. The true nature of the entity bound to Eda being the most important of them. Lilith being a bad influence on Hooty being another, though I could have easily predicted that one. The stuff with King's developing (titanic?) powers and Luz and Amity now grudgingly dating like I was sure that they'd started doing back in "Grom Fright" is also interesting and satisfying.

Good episode, and a good example of The Owl House's tonal range from the dead serious stuff with Eda's life story to the low-stakes fluff with Luz and Amity to Hooty's dumb slapstick.