The Owl House S2E10: "Yesterday's Lie" (continued)

Donning a hat that hides her messed up fish-dragon ears, Vee heads to that Starbucks that Eda made a scene at to see if she left anything there. No luck, though. The pastries she cursed were thrown away some time ago, and their magic has already bioaccumulated into the rats that feed from the nearby dumpster.

I guess she could try eating the rats, but those are hard enough to catch to begin with, and them being ostensibly sapient now poses moral as well as practical complications. Anyway, not really an option.

One other thing the barista mentions, though, is that there's some creepy guy who's been obsessed with Eda (or "Marilyn" as she apparently called herself at the time) ever since the incident, and he's still harassing her and her coworkers for more information. I'm guessing that that's who left the traps and hidden cameras around Eda's favored portal site, then.

...

Probably not the sharpest tool in the shed, in that case, though; like, what, does he actually think that catching a literal witch with literal magic powers in a rabbit-snare could possibly end well for him?

...

Fortunately, it turns out that Eda's interdimensional dumpster-diving ways aren't strictly monodirectional. After giving up on the cafe lead, Vee happens on some teenagers playing with unusual-looking trading cards at a park. Looking through a handheld mirror that Vee is holding, Luz recognizes these as Boiling Isles consumer goods that Eda had mumbled about needing to get rid of a while ago.

Vee's magic-sniffing nose reveals that the cards' magic has already worn out, but Luz's experience with these cards tells her that another deck that hasn't recieved as much use might still have some power in them. I'm guessing these cards do some kind of magic special effect when you play with them? I feel like I saw Luz and her friends playing with them in an earlier episode, but I can't recall any details, so I'll just take this episode's word for it.

Vee wants to go talk to those kids and ask them where they got those cards. Luz is very resistant to this idea, because she knows that her Earth peer group is a hard one to navigate socially, and she's afraid of Vee doing something while in her form to embarrass her.

I...feel like it's a little too late in the series for Luz to be caring about this, tbh. After this many brushes with death? This many perceived threats to both her new friends and (implicitly) to her homeworld? And hell, after the amount of social maturing she's done, and the friendships and romance she's managed over the last six-odd months? I have trouble imagining her still caring about this shit, or even still being socially insecure enough to be bothered by it.

Once again, "The Owl House's" insistence on still being a fluffy kiddy show long after its premise has moved away from that is the source of most of my frustrations with it.

Anyway, it turns out that Vee actually knows these kids. Specifically, she knows them from the Normal-Away camp that she attended in Luz's place. Didn't think so many of the inmates at that camp would have come from the same town, but maybe in this world there's a veritable plague of those camps or something. Anyway, Vee seems to have done at least as good a job at making friends on Earth as Luz has on the Boiling Isles. Better, honestly.

Those fake letters that Camila received were actually, apart from claiming to be from Luz, genuine. Vee liked being at the camp. She was excited to learn about sports and lowest-common-denominator pop music.

Granted, the fact that such a camp would be an absolutely *perfect* place for an alien infiltrator to learn how to pass for human probably also won it some points from her. Any weirdness or ignorance she displays would have been received with "wow, this one really IS a weirdo, she needs more attention." Attention which would then teach her how to attract less suspicion going forward. Yeah, these places are basically human-provided training camps for entities like her lol.

Anyway, this suggests that Vee must have replaced Luz riiiiight after she ran off with Eda. Like, presumably before the bus that Luz was supposed to catch even came by, literal minutes after the real Luz chased the palisman into the abandoned house. Wonder what circumstances could have led to that? What was going on with Vee just offscreen during that scene?

Also, I wonder if the writers had this planned from the beginning or not.

Anyway, it's lucky that Luz limited herself to monosyllabic text messages and emojis when she still had cell phone contact with Earth. If she'd made up detailed lies about what was going on at camp, they'd have contracted Vee's letters, and then there would have been serious trouble.

...

Although...honestly, the fact that there was enough distance between Luz and Camila for Vee to literally insert herself between them without either of the two realizing it, while they were still in contact with each other, is a whole new kind of depressing.

The fact that Camila legitimately cares about Luz and thinks she's being a good mother makes it worse instead of better.

Like, when Camila eventually learns the truth, I think it might do almost as much emotional damage to her as believing Luz had gone missing would have done.

...

While talking to the Normal Camp parolees, one of them offers to use the cards to tell Vee's future. Vee was adamant that the cards have no magic left in them, so I'll take it for granted that the prophecy the other kids give her is just coincidentally on point. A prophecy about how trying to flee her past will end with her running in endless circles until she can find the courage to turn around and face it head to head.

It definitely leaves Vee shaken. And...also leaves Luz shaken, both on Vee's behalf and her own. Both of them manage to suppress their shakenness for now, though.

So, after Vee says goodbye to her old Normal Camp buddies while also being insecure, and Luz marvels at how good a job of living her life Vee seems to have done while also being insecure, it's off to the town's historical society. Apparently, the kids bought them from the guy who runs the HS's little museum, as he had enough of those cards onhand that he didn't see the need to keep them all on display.

The town historical society guy has a distinctly creepy vibe. And seems a little too eager to help. And seems to have predicted a few too many details about Vee's arrival before she approaches him.

I think we've just met our rabbit poacher.

While the creepy curator guy disappears into the storeroom for a suspiciously long period of time, Vee and Luz are left in silence without much to do. Both their minds are pulled back to the probably-coincidental fortune telling. Luz is ready to forget about it and encourages Vee to do the same, but Vee isn't having it.

Apparently, Vee isn't just "some refugee." Her demon species, the basilisks, went extinct a long time ago. A few years ago, the Imperial Coven managed to Jurassic Park them back into existence in order to study their legendary magic-absorbing abilities.

Apparently that isn't something that most demons can do. Alright, good to know. Do these basilisks have any power relating to venom, or people looking at them? Kinda surprised that they don't, since those are the core folkloric traits of basilisks, while shapeshifting and magic-absorption definitely aren't. But anyway.

"Vee" was never actually given a name. She was specimen number 5, and her cage was marked with a Roman numeral, hence "V." Their creator/captors had no interest in them as people, or even as living organisms, just in studying their abilities. Vee was one of several who managed to escape and hide in the wildernesses of the Boiling Isles, hunted by the Imperial Coven and independent bounty hunters alike. Some of them used their shapeshifting to try and blend in with the populace. Others became monsters, staying in the badlands and killing and eating any witch or sapient demon that learned of them. Vee was one of the gentler of the escapees, who resisted the pressures pushing her toward violence and predation in the interest of survival, but the conditions weren't kind to someone with those convictions. She was at her wits end when - while hiding out at the marketplace - she saw Luz come through Eda's portal from Earth and distract her long enough for Vee to slip passed and seek refuge in this other world.

She took Luz's form because that was the only human she'd ever seen. And, just a few minutes after she crept out of that abandoned house, Camila came back outside and told her that she'd decided to drive Luz to the camp instead of making her take the bus. It was cruel of her not to do so from the beginning. She loves her daughter, and wants to make sure she understands that she's trying to help her, not trying to get rid of her. She'll even let Luz choose the music and the food stops all the way there.

Vee was just quiet, cheerful, and grateful, and managed to avoid suspicion by being quiet and letting Camila do most of the talking (and sort of cold reading her for information about Luz to use going forward). Any weirdness she displayed was interpreted as Luz acting out by trying to play one of her derpy pretend games.

Since that day, Vee has been preoccupied by this burning question. This disbelief and confusion. And, now that she's actually met and talked to Luz, a deep, resentful contempt.

How could anyone have ever run away from a life like Luz's?

How dare Luz reject this life that fate was so incredibly kind and generous as to gift her with?

It isn't spoken, yet, but the fact that Luz's reappearance is now threatening what Vee has managed to build out of the paradise Luz threw away like trash is going to put them at cross-purposes. Probably as soon as Vee has enough magic for another shape-shifting.

However, that might be a while. When the creepy curator guy doesn't come back, Vee follows him into the back room to see what's up. There, she and Luz find, well, exactly what I figured.

The fact that the room is full of witch-hunting paraphernalia and literature rather than just witch paraphernalia and literature doesn't exactly bode well. I'm thinking this guy is a crazy *religious* conspiracy theorist, rather than just a crazy conspiracy theorist.

Vee panics and attempts to flee, only to trigger one of the guy's many booby-traps, and this one - built in his own staff room - is a little more sophisticated than the derpy rabbit-snares.

Once again, Vee reflexively tries to shapeshift herself free. Only to expend the last atoms of her magic in the process, and revert entirely to her natural form. Prompting creepy curator guy to come back in and start with the supervillain gloating.

Well. Sort of. He's a pretty shit supervillain. But you can tell he's giving this his all, so I'll give him at least a B- for effort. Or, well...C+? Yeah, I think C+ is more fair. There's just a certain degree of rizzlessness that no amount of effort can completely make up for. He believes in the usual conspiracy milieu (or at least, as much of it as Disney would allow. No mention of (((them))), for instance), and just happens to have made witches the central pillar of it rather than one of the sideshows like they usually are. He believes that the witches that have been crossing over into this town from Mars (because of course it's Mars) are a real and present danger to humanity in general and America in particular, and that now that he has irrefutable proof of that he can finally kick off his YouTube career for real.

Yeah.

Vee's got no way out of this. And, she tells Luz, even if she did have a way out of the cage, she wouldn't be able to go back to living Luz's life now that this psycho knows where she lives. Back to a life of cages for her, it seems. The absolute worst thing she could imagine, the thing she's been fleeing from the start, has caught up with her, and this time she won't even have other captive feral child basilisks for company.

And it only happened because Luz reappeared. If she'd just stayed gone for good, then both Vee and Camila would be so, so much happier. And hell, didn't Luz want to get rid of this life to begin with? Why the hell did she have to have buyer's remorse and come back to ruin everything for everyone else rather than just herself?

Vee doesn't say most of that out loud. Just a little of it. But the subtext is loud and clear.

In response...Luz manifests into her house again, and gets her mother's attention. Apparently I misinterpreted what happened earlier; magicless humans can see and hear Luz's reflections, she just wasn't loud enough to be heard last time.

So, she appears to her mother, and comes completely clean.


Three parter.