Poster Dana Terrace tweeted:


Also, Rebecca Rose (production associate on the show) tweeted a whole bunch of portraits from Hollow Mind. Too much of a hassle to repost them all, so here's the link. Worth a look if you haven't seen them.

https://twitter.com/HeyRebeccaRose/status/1642950318127448064?cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw==&refsrc=email

 

Spoiler: Closing shot

Haven’t seen the finale yet myself due to night shift, but from what I saw on Twitter, get ready for a lot of onion cutting.



Thank You Dana

 

Disney uploaded the full final episode to their YouTube channel

 

Well shit…
It’s actually over

 

Best moment.

Spoiler

"NOW EAT THIS, SUCKA!"

I'll...Gather my full thoughts later. For now, I just want to say that this show is one of my absolute favorites in recent years!
Would I call it perfect? No. But there was a lot of heart, it was genuine, and beautiful. And I'm sorry it got caught up in Disney's weird branding issues and cost cutting measures.

I wish Dana Terrace luck, in whatever her future endeavors may be. If they can be as good as The Owl House was? I'm sure they'll be worth the wait.

 

I hope this show's fan base inspires confidence from other networks in Dana. This show had more of a Cartoon Network type of feel to it and they allowed Steven Universe and Adventure Time so much time to shine. That might be a better place for her.

This finale I have some mixed feelings about. They had to rush things and generally speaking it didn't feel rushed, but stuff like the nightmare sequence at the beginning could've been cut to add more time to the meat of the plot. I'm glad Belos stayed the main villain for this and he got a really good climax. The ticking bomb of the finale was a very good way of doing a climax with him and got us some of that lovely horror.

Spoiler

Glad they were naturally able to sneak in that King's parentage was just the Titan. Seems to also imply that Titans can change size, which explains the tiny egg. It was generally really cool to finally see something out of the Titan and close the book on King's Titan ancestry. Adds some interesting implications too, where we can maybe guess that he wanted life to spring up on his corpse seeing as how relaxed and against Belos he was.

Really don't think Luz should have died to meet him. That was a big issue with this finale. The In-Between has been reached before without anyone dying and it ultimately served no purpose other than really appear as plot armor. Not to mention, it should've undermined the Collector's lesson about death if the one death they experienced immediately got reversed. Odalia didn't do anything and he seemed to like her, they should've killed her.

 

Spoiler

My main problem is we got no new lore. Wasn't bad, but definitely would've liked more. Also think belos should've gotten more screentime and a less jokey death. Other then that, all things considered it was really good.

 

Spoiler

I feel his death should have been accompanied by his spirit being dragged off by the spirits of the Grimwalkers, while he begs Caleb to help him. Caleb just leaves him to his fate, passing on peacefully now that his death has been avenged. Maybe he could say a brief "Thank you" to Luz for standing against what his brother became and putting an end to the tragedy that was their story.

 

That would've been much more haunting and better.

 

Spoiler

Her death was needed to teach the collector about death. He didn't understand it and it taught him real quick. "why won't she come back?"

Pretty good ending. did catch the "I'm finish" wrote on the wall in one scene. Guess the creator left that to disney!

One neat thing i didn't catch but others did--

Spoiler

Luz standing there at the end when the bad guy is dying is the same look and pose his brothers "ghost" was in! Has some people making theories on that.

 

Disney uploaded all 3 “episodes” of season 3 into one big movie on YouTube

 

Did anyone get major Alignment Liege Maximo vibes from titan Belos in watching in dreaming?

 

I have elected to rewatch The Owl House. Not many shows have me hooked enough to want to rewatch them (in fact I can only name four that I have rewatched with some regularity: Beast Wars, Avatar The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power). Granted, the only of those four that I've recently done a complete rewatch of recently (as in, like, the last two years) are the Avatar shows.

So lets start off with episode one: A Lying Witch and a Warden

OOOOOOH MAN, I'd forgotten how kind of weak the first episode of the series was. It's not the worst series opener ever, but it's certainly not the best. I find the first two episodes are kind of the source of most of the weirdest examples of early installment weirdness in the show, most notably King: Early on, he's treated more like Eda's roommate, we're given no indication that he's meant to be a child, rather he comes off as a childish/delusional adult. Back to the episode: the main plot is mostly hinged on Eda and King roping Luz into retrieving King's "crown" from the Conformatorium, run by Warden Wrath, who enforces strict social policies to the point that he jails people essentially for just being weird, setting up the series theme about how "weirdos" deserve respect and recognition, rather than derision and to be made to "conform." It ties in well with Luz's decision to stay in the Isles, but some of the delivery is a little clunky at this point in the show.

Episode two: Witches Before Wizards

So picking up where the first episode left off, Luz wakes up in the morning, excited that it wasn't all just a dream and that she really is in a magical world. Eda, barely awake, hardly recalls that she even agreed to anything or who Luz is, but tells Luz that she'll teach her and get her a magic staff if she does work for her. She briefly alludes to magic schools, setting up Luz finding Hexside in episode 3. Anyway, this episode is centered on deconstructing Luz's trope laden vision of being the only human in the Isles as far as anyone can tell. She gets so wrapped up in the idea of being a "chosen one" that she gets tricked by one of Eda's rivals to lure her into a trap. I do think it's a stronger episode than the first, in particular because it immediately dispels Luz's notions of being inherently special, ending on the note of Eda delivering the moral about not standing around waiting for someone else to tell you that you're special.

I'll get to episode 3 later.

 

So we're back, having just finished episodes 3&4.
I'll spoilering these, since they got a bit long...

Spoiler

I Was A Teenage Abomination

So, after Eda mentioned school in episode 2, here we see Luz actually ask about it while Eda's showing her how she does her day to day job -- by picking human garbage out of giant horrible trash slugs! Luz isn't very enthusiastic about it, and Eda's not taking actually teaching Luz very seriously. She heads off after Eda fishes a greasy glob out of a gross pool. Leading to meeting Willow! And Amity. The episode properly introduces the audience to Hexside and gives a little bit of insight into the world building. It's weird seeing how Amity started out VS where she ends, though what we learn about her later seriously recontextualizes her behavior during this episode. Like when we first meet her in the same scene with Willow, she seems like she's being condescending -- and, well, she is -- but she does genuinely want to help Willow get better. It's just she's still steeped in her family's way of thinking and doing things, so she comes off as extremely passive aggressive and demeaning about it. Then the nearly getting Luz dissected by Principal Bump thing...That's, uh, quite a turn. So Luz gets banned from school grounds for posing as an Abomination and helping Willow cheat in her class, but it turned out the greasy glob from the garbage beach was actually a seed, which Willow used to help Luz escape with an impressive display of plant magic. So Principal Bump, impressed with Willow, transfers her to the proper track that will let her hone her abilities.

The previous two episodes are a bit of a drag, but episode 3 really shines by comparison.


The Intruder

So the episode starts with Luz doing a David Attenborough impression as she films King struggling with a sock stuck on his nose. King's trying to give Luz a lesson about demons, but she's not very focused on it, until they hear thunder. Luz runs out, expecting normal rain, but gets dragged back inside by Eda, clarifying that the Boiling Isles doesn't really have normal weather. The rain is boiling, shale comes down when it's hailing, and they name drop gorenadoes and painbows. The show kind of had a weak start with those first two episodes, but by episode 4 we have some stronger writing! And mystery, since this is the episode where we learn about Eda's curse, and the first appearance of glyph magic. After accidentally knocking Eda out trying to record her doing a light spell on her phone, Luz briefly tells King why she's so fixated on learning magic, talking to him about how she was a nobody back home and no one took her seriously. This is the basis of the bond between the two of them, since King also wants desperately to be important and respected.

Thinking Eda's elixirs are the source of her magic, King steals a bottle to try to help Luz, but suddenly the lights go out and they see something attacking Hooty at the front door. At first they think it's the Snaggleback, a shelled demon that supposedly hunts during the boiling rains, but that little guy turns out to be pretty harmless and they soon realize that the monster Eda after King finds the other half of the elixir's label. "An Elixir a Day Keeps the Curse At Bay." Luz accidentally drives Owl Beast Eda off when her phone gets dropped and cracks -- the damage apparently causes the glyph to appear in the spell circle that Eda drew when Luz was recording her, discovering that drawing the pattern generates a ball of light.

King and Luz lure Eda into another room, where Luz uses a big glyph to subdue Eda based on King's knowledge of demons. Once she's out, they use an extra elixir to change her back to normal. Afterward, she tells them the truth, that she was cursed when she was young. Her elixirs are the only thing that keep it manageable, otherwise she turns into the Owl Beast. We're left with the question, then, who cursed her, and why? Answers we get later, at the end of the season.

All in all, a kinda weak opener and follow up, but I find the show hits it's stride pretty quick with episode 4!

Next time, episode 5: Covention

 

Okay, so it took me a bit to get back to doing this, partly because I got to watching way more than episode 5.

Spoiler

Episode 5: Covention

We open on Luz reading excerpts of Good Witch Azura, much to Eda's annoyance, attributing their lack of customers to it's flowery language, until Luz points out there's no one around at all, not even other stalls. Willow and Gus arrive, delivering our exposition about the Covention, summarized essentially as a job fair for witches. Eda's disgusted with it and refuses to allow Luz to attend, so Luz gets King to start reading more Good Witch Azura to make her comply.

In this episode, we learn more about the nature of the Isles and how the whole system functions. Episode 3 introduced us to Hexside, different magic tracks and classes at the school, but here we're introduced to the Covens that represent them as apart of the government of the Isles. It's here that we also learn that officially joining a Coven means being branded with a special sigil that seals magic and limits a witch to only one type. The only Coven that allows all magic types is the Emperor's Coven, made up of the most skilled witches on the Isles, and led by none other than Lilith Clawthorne, Eda's sister. Luz bumps into Amity again, who is mostly just annoyed with her presence, and proceeds to be a bit of a bully. Meanwhile, King started accepting "offerings" from the Covention, tripping and dropping a cupcake that Amity promptly squashed before he could pick it up. Since Amity was being mean to King, Luz, standing up for him and not really thinking ahead, challenges Amity to a Witch's Duel, that she only realizes after the fact that she has no chance of winning. We're really getting into the start of their arc together now. Eda runs into Lilith, who initially mistakes Eda's presence for finally coming to join the Emperor's Coven. They get into it a little bit and Eda brags about her student -- cue a panicking Luz, who explains that she challenged Amity to a duel. Lilith takes the challenge with Eda about their respective students and allows Eda a day free of being chased by the cops.

It occurs to Eda that she hasn't really taught Luz anything, and even if she had, Luz can only do magic with the light glyph, which at this point, she can't do much with. So Eda gets the idea to cheat with traps set in the arena. They're quickly exposed and Lilith starts to gloat while Amity storms off in anger that Luz cheated -- only to find out that Lilith cheated too, putting a power glyph on her neck that made her magic stronger. While Luz runs after Amity, Eda and Lilith get into a real witches duel, showing off an impressive magic battle that eventually causes the audience to evacuate. Luz and Amity have a talk, since Amity is so upset about Lilith having tried to cheat their duel, and although she's still dismissive of Luz, she breaks the pact Luz made with her that would have meant Luz had to stop trying to learn to be a witch.

All in all, strong episode. We learn about the Covens, how the magic system is set up, and are introduced to Lilith, as well as the references to the Emperor himself, telling us what kind of government the Isles is living under. Considering what we saw in episode one, with the Conformatorium, it already wasn't a pretty picture.


Episode 6: Hooty's Moving Hassle

Eda's addicted to playing a card game, Hexes Hold'em (obvious play on Texas Hold'em), which leads to her overlooking that her supply of elixir to suppress the curse is down. She almost doesn't even go to try getting more, because she's still trying to play more of this game. While at the market, they run into Willow and Gus, who are dejected because it's the night a Moonlight Conjuring can be performed and they weren't invited to the one Amity is supposedly hosting with her friends. It's a glorified magical slumber party. Luz offers to let them do it at the Owl House, but Eda's not interested since she has to go to the Night Market for elixir instead, leaving Luz in charge of watching the house (and warning her that she'll never trust her again if she messes up). She lies to Willow and Gus that it's okay, and sneaks them in after Eda leaves with King.

This episode is pretty simple. Luz and friends perform the conjuring to animate a toy, only to animate the house instead, taking control of Hooty and taking him on a joyride. They scare Boscha and then Willow gets the idea to take him to the Blight manor to show up Amity and her friends. Unfortunately, they get caught by Demon Hunters, who want to sell Hooty as exotic meat. Eda gets caught up playing Hexes Hold'em against Tibbles, the owner of a stand at the Night Market, who trounces her in a game and takes King, while planning to turn her in to get the reward for her capture.

While the trio's is hanging over a cliff from a branch, Willow is apologetic for pushing Luz to show up Amity when she wanted to take Hooty back, blaming herself for the situation they've ended up in. It's here we learn that Willow and Amity actually used to be friends! But when Amity's magic manifested and Willow's didn't, Amity stopped hanging out with her. They manage to get back up the cliff, and with newfound confidence from Luz's encouragement, Willow overpowers the Demon Hunters and they rescue Hooty. Their actions inadvertently destroy Tibbles's stand as well, rescuing Eda and King in the process.

Eda is understandably angry, but since Gus and Willow also take responsibility, she settles for just making them all clean up the house while she rests. That said, she's impressed that they managed to animate the whole house, saying that takes some really powerful magic. Meanwhile, Amity's friends completely failed to do their own conjuring and are surprised when they see pictures on Pentstagram of the Owl House joyride and recognize the trio in one of the pictures. "WHAT!?" indeed, girls, what indeed.


Episode 7: Lost In Language

And now for another Luz and Amity episode. Eda and King spend the episode babysitting the Bat Queen's children, to get a reward for a job well done because she's one of the wealthiest demons on the Isles, while sending Luz to return overdue library books. While there, she finds Amity reading to kids. She wants to befriend Amity, but, well, they're still on rocky terms since Amity just feels like Luz causes nothing but trouble. Not helped by Luz meeting her older twin siblings, Edric and Emira, who rope Luz into general mischief making around the library before Amity gets the three of them kicked out. They convince her to come back later, when the Wailing Star is passing over the Isles, since supposedly something magical is supposed to happen during the star's passage.

Luz meets up with the twins at the library, and they break in, initially disappointed when seemingly nothing happened, but discover that the star causes the contents of the books to come to life off the pages. After having some fun with this, they vandalize a couple of books -- including the kid's book Amity was reading earlier -- before bringing Luz to Amity's secret room in the library. It turns, they want to take Amity's attitude down a peg by taking her diary and posting the pages all over school, but Luz thinks this is going too far and tries to stop it. Of course, Amity shows up and accuses Luz of being a bully (a bit hypocritical) and refuses to listen when Luz tries to explain.

They're soon accosted by a monstrous version of the character from the kid's book Ed and Em vandalized earlier, who starts trying to sew Luz and Amity into paper so that they can be his friends forever. After a brief battle with him, Amity writes down "Luz needs to right a wrong," giving her a magic eraser to erase Ed and Em's vandalism and turn the character back to normal. They stay and clean up the library together, but Amity still rebuffs Luz's attempt to be friendly at the end. She does accept Luz loaning her Book 5 of Good Witch Azura, though, after she found out Amity is a fan of the series as well.

Eda and King's babysitting subplot went remarkably well, and Luz finds them peacefully sleeping with the babies. Bat Queen arrives to pick up her children, leaving behind a chest of gold, while Eda and King turn out to have gotten attached to the babies and already miss their presence. Fittingly, Luz checked out an "empty nest syndrome" book for Eda.

The Luz and Amity subplot continues. Their relationship is still a bit rocky, but they're getting better.

The show really picked up with episodes four and five. Strong world building and character writing in these three. It's a shame that this set is followed up with Once Upon a Swap, which is firmly filler, and on the weaker side of filler might I add. It's a freaky Friday body swap episode (though the body swap was on purpose) that just doesn't really add anything of note to the show. Personally, I'd encourage others to skip it.

Next time: Something Ventured, Someone Framed and Escape of the Palisman

 

In case anyone's interested and doesn't have a streaming subscription, the full Season 1 of the Owl House is available for free on Disney Now:

Watch The Owl House TV Show | Disney XD on DisneyNOW

Just finished rewatching Agony of a Witch again. Hands down my favorite episode of the show.

Also, I think some of the early episodes of this show are really fun and underrated. For example, I think Witches Before Wizards is one of the the show's best.