The Owl House S2E15-17: "Them's the Breaks, Kid," "Hollow Mind," and "Edge of the World"

This review was commissioned by Aris Katsaris.


This trio of episodes basically confirms my suspicions about what was going on behind the scenes during late season 2. They thought they were getting more time to tell the intended story, but then were told that they wouldn't be getting that time, but then found out that they'd have a bit more time after all, repeat possibly several times. I've seen enough other series struggle through this predicament that the symptoms are easy to spot. The breakneck oscillation between ill-timed filler and rapid-fire important plot revelations. The bizarre one-off contrivances that appear and disappear within the space of one episode in order to make the next story beat happen without any foreshadowing or buildup. Etc.

I enjoyed most of what I saw in these three episodes, but it almost feels like I'm reading an author's outline instead of a finished product. Which is a pity, because with more setup, breathing room, and narrative connective tissue, this could have been much better.


"Them's the Breaks, Kid" is the episode of this batch that suffers the least from the problems described above. The weirdest thing about it is that it's coming seven episodes after Raine Whispers' introduction in "Eda's Requiem" and four episodes after the revelation of their current predicament in "Covens Day Parade." This one is all about Eda and Raine's history, and providing context for some other supporting cast members. It doesn't move the plot forward, really, but as a backstory episode it's not filler or breather either. It feels like it probably should have come either right after "Eda's Requiem," or right after "Coven's Day Parade." Putting the story of how Eda and Raine came to be so close after multiple episodes of Eda trying to save them, and making it share series space with so many unrelated major revelations, well...

Like, the catalyst for this flashback is Eda randomly telling Luz "wanna know how Raine and I met?" and Luz answering "lol okay."

Just weirdly unbounded from its place in the episode order.

The story Eda tells starts seven months before the events that led to Lilith cursing her, with the Clawthorne sisters as a pair of high-achieving high school students under a much younger and less totalitarian Belos regime. The writing this time around is much tighter than it was in the similar flashback sequences of "Young Blood" and "A-Fearances." Both in how it shows teenaged Eda and teenaged Lilith play off of each other, and in the look it gives us at how Belos went about consolidating power and the kind of gradual transition he had to put the Boiling Isles through to get there.

The latter is...let's just say it's very strongly relevant to the politics of the country this show was created in during the time of its creation. There are other historical precedents that it could be based on, but they're the same historical precedents that everyone else has already been comparing to this.

The state coven system is a new-ish thing for the general public. One of the following episodes explains that Belos was using the covens among his own followers years before his subjugation of the islands, but there were apparently barriers - legal as well as cultural, interestingly! However it was he took over, he evidently wasn't able to wipe all the existing laws and government structures aside and start fresh - to making non-coven members outright second class citizens. We see the covens being strongly pushed by the schools and nonmembership derided and discouraged, but there's no imminent threat of unpersoning hanging over young witches' heads. Belos needed to ease most of the people into it, and/or wait for enough of the older generations to die off. Our biggest case-in-point of where the regime is at right now comes in the form of a young Tara Snapdragon who was recently put in charge of the school system.

We've seen an elderly, cautious, manipulative version of Tara in the show's present. Back when Eda was a kid, well...Tara was whichever Trump appointee is being the most visibly deranged in public at the moment. She's evidently just taken over both the herbalist coven and the school system, and is having trouble running both while being completely fucking insane. An interesting and well thought out detail is that she runs roughshod over civil regulations and school policies with cacklingly eager disdain, but is forced to grit her teeth and conform with the letter of the law when it comes to criminal matters. She also needs to be frequently reminded of the difference between the two, why they're different, and why that's important.

It's honestly pretty prescient for a 2022 release. The trends were obviously already pointing in this direction, sure, but Tara's portrayal here is much more spot-on satire of the second Trump presidency than it is of the first.

Another peek at the background political environment comes in the form of Principle Bump's predecessor at the Hexside school, a horned reaper by the name of Principle Faust.

Faust was recently elevated from his customary job of praying, eating chickens, and slaughtering anything that sets foot in the dungeon, and tasked with wiping the local school system clean of oldthinkers. The episode doesn't make it explicit that that's why he was given his position, but it pretty heavily implies it. Any students who show the smallest nonconformist tendencies are at risk of expulsion. Teachers and staff get sacked left and right, making room for the regime's hand-picked replacements as soon as they become available. As an elderly traditionalist, Vice-Principle Bump has defied fate and foe alike by clinging onto his position. Faust is trying to find any possible excuse to get rid of him, and part of the episode plot is triggered by Faust trying to set Bump up to fail.

At first I thought I might be overthinking Faust, and that he may just be a "angry demon principle who wants to fire/expel everyone" gag character. But then the end of the episode has him losing his own job due to some office politics among the imperials that backfired on him, so no, he is indeed a member of Belos' administrational vanguard.

The character work is also informative. From its first scenes onward, the flashback paints a compelling picture of Eda and Lilith as teenagers, where their sibling relationship came from, and where it would ultimately go.

Eda is a prodigy, mastering their studies without trying and even starting to advance her own theories about the nature of magic. She takes little seriously. School is mostly a waste of time for her, and she knows it. Her test scores are perfect, but she's too much of a troublemaker to be given any academic honors or recognition. Which suits her just fine.

Lilith is also a top student, but she has to struggle and toil around the clock in order to manage what her sister can do without effort. Eda is able to have fun and not take things seriously and still be a good student. Lilith has to forgo everything else in order to do the same. Eda is frustrated by Lilith always having her nose in a book when she wants to go do fun stuff with her. Lilith is nearly bursting with incandescent envy, and every time Eda asks her why she's so boring and dour all the time she has to exert visible effort to not explode at her.

It's a frozen moment within a long, dark, depressing Caine and Abel arc whose conclusion we already know. It sells that arc more convincingly than any of the show's previous attempts.

Also, either the VA's are really good at sounding younger, or the new VA's they got to play younger versions of the sisters really nailed it. Eda in particular sounds reeeeaaally convincingly like "herself but younger."

Anyway, after taking the fall for a school misdemeanour they were both (unintentionally) complicit in, Eda finds herself facing down Principle Faust. To avoid expulsion (which mostly scares her because schoolwork is the one thing she and Lilith can still do together), she agrees to represent the school in some intermural tournament meant to advertise the Imperial Coven youth recruitment program. Faust also sends Vice Principle Bump to chaperone her in his own stead. Very clearly hoping to humiliate Bump when Eda's inevitable antics get them both in trouble, and hopefully building enough of a case to have the troublesome conservative dismissed.

If I have a criticism of the story-within-a-story of this episode, it's the portrayal of young Bump and teenaged Eda's interactions.

Having them as unlikely allies struggling through a bad situation together, and ultimately triumphing over a mutual antagonist in Principle Faust, is hard for me to square with how they've talk about their history together during adult interactions. I can see how the compassionate, in-over-his-head teacher in this episode might grow into the cantankerous hardass Principle Bump that Luz will later have to deal with. Hell, he'd have to harden in order to keep his new position for multiple decades under Belos' ever-tightening grip. That character evolution makes sense to me given the circumstances. It's just the way he interacts with Eda, specifically, that doesn't ring true to his other appearances in the show. Even if he quickly got fed up with Eda's troublemaking ways in the last few months after Faust's departure and before the owlbear curse, I feel like this incident should be foundational in how they regard each other.

I wonder if they just didn't have the details of Eda and Bump's history figured out when they wrote the season one scripts, and are trying to quietly retcon some details here.

Anyway, it's at the tournament that Eda makes the acquaintance of Raine Whispers. Raine was a scholarship kid from an underprivileged background, only able to continue paying tuition for as long as they overperform. For this reason, Raine has made sure they get into multiple tournaments like this one, and successfully collect an award at each one.

Also, going by the voice acting for their child self, Raine is AFAB. Never would have guessed!

Anyway, Raine and Eda quickly bond over being coerced into tournament participation, and generally feeling like their talents are being wasted. They decide to put their heads together and come up with a series of clever, creative, and performatively irreverent solutions to all the challenges, making their collaboration clear throughout (some of these challenges are meant to be done as pairs, others they have to get extra creative in order to cooperate in). They manage to impress most observers, but the irreverence and spirit-of-the-rules avoidance does not endear them to the school system administrator who judges the performances.

After being told by a longsuffering attendant that she cannot ignore the law against summary executions on a whim (or the law against forcing everyone to fight to the death to get their ribbons), Tara decides that the punitive curveball should be a game of "covens and wilds." One team has to capture all members of the other team. Chasers all get a ribbon if their team wins. Fleers get a ribbon if they amuse Tara. Nothing else they've done so far matters (that aspect is still against civil regulations, but she spitefully tells those to just fuck right off). Go for it, assholes.

Eda and Raine, on opposite teams, outperform all others, and then come together to look Tara in the eye and tell her she's dumb and stupid and her tournament sucks balls. They even make fun of her overuse of plant puns, which punches right through her emotional armor let me tell you. However, she's also impressed by their general maverick nature, and claims that this is really the sort of attitude she'd been looking for all along. It's anyone's guess as to whether she's telling the truth here, or if she's just coping with the realization that she's been playing the heel in front of everyone. Anyway, nobody gets an achievement ribbon, but she does give her own special commendations to the two winners, and also fires Principle Faust for arcane office politics reasons that I didn't entirely catch.

Raine lost their scholarship, but ended up transferring to the cheaper Hexside, where they and Eda continued their friendship until it eventually turned romantic.

This backstory might throw a bit of a wrench into Principle Bump's current relationship with Eda, but it does illuminate Tara Snapdragon's interest in Raine. She probably took a big political hit when Eda went rogue, but gained a bunch of brownie points back when Raine became the head of the bard coven. When Raine turned traitor as well, she really had to scramble and put all her resources into getting them back in line, or else her entire legacy of doing maverick whacky things comes crumbling down and the entire network of allies and underlings she's likely build by doing them falls under the Emperor's suspicion. Old Tara has been regretting Young Tara's juvenile recklessness and power-mad impulses.

Back in the present, we see Tara giving Raine more amnesia potion.

And, once her back is turned, Raine using their transmutative voice powers (an ability demonstrated during the flashback story) to surreptitiously disable said potion before drinking it.

It's unclear how long Raine has been free of Tara's control, but seemingly at least a little while. They must have figured out early on that the holes in their memory were induced, put two and two together, and started whistling the potion off before drinking it to see what resurfaced. Smart Raine.

Anyway, Raine is playing along for now. Keeping in touch with some secret contacts, but choosing not to let Eda in on the true situation. Raine is still operating on the logic that led them to sacrifice themselves back in "Requiem," that Eda has too many dependants to be dragged back into the rebellion.

It's possible that Raine was already free-minded and making this decision during their encounter in "Coven's Day Parade." I don't think so, but it's possible.


Like I said, very well written episode, but it's placement feels off. Honestly, I think that seeing this episode right after "Requiem" would have made the most sense. It's basically an extension of "introducing Raine Whispers." It would also introduce Tara Snapdragon's younger self first, and then - only after that - we meet her in modern times as a spiteful old witch struggling to get her old proteges back under control. I think that would have been stronger; it would immediately read as "oh no, the crazy lady got him back under her thumb!" rather than "oh, I guess there's a new henchwoman being introduced, and she makes mind control potions or something." The revelation that Raine has broken free from the potion, of course, would presumably come later, in the coda of a different episode.

I don't know, that's just how I'd do it given the advantage of retrospect and no production timeline pressures.