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After an episode focusing mainly on Willow and Hunter last week, The Owl House returned its focus to Luz, and her continuing struggles with having her life still split between the Human Realm and The Boiling Isles. While starting off as a seemingly minor emotional issue, it quickly reveals itself to be a big emotional revelation. This episode had it all. Action, emotion and heart, the keys to what make The Owl House stand out as an exceptional work of television.
Luz wakes up to an alert on her phone. Thinking nothing of it at first, she remembers where she is and quickly checks the notification. We see her phone is giving her a reminder for an event with her mother. She sadly ignores the reminder.
King and Eda walk in on Luz working on a “murder board” trying to figure out everything Belos is up to. She tells them it’s going to be a productive day of problem solving. She hands Eda a checklist of all the things she’s going to accomplish like building a new door, learning new glyph combinations and figuring out what Belos is planning. She shows them a new glyph combo she created, a safety hover. She throws Francois in the air and before he hits the floor, he begins to hover and land gently. She’s also in the process of building a new door. We see Hooty holding up a hastily thrown together door. He sneezes and it collapses to the ground. She also has contacted Hunter on Penstagram and is trying to get information about Belos from him, though he’s not giving her any real information.
Eda realizes she’s avoiding something which Luz denies. She then caves and tells them that every year Luz and her mom do a ritual and she misses her. King tells her she needs a distraction, like breakfast! Just then Amity barges in and tells Luz she has a problem and it could keep them busy all day. Talk about perfect timing!!
Amity excitedly tells her dad it’s the Bonesborough Brawl tonight. This is the first year she’s old enough to participate in it. He tells her he’s unable to bring her to the Brawl because they’re holding the Emperor’s Coven tryouts in town. Her mother signed her up and they prepared an abomination chaperone to bring her. The abomination picks Amity up and keeps her safe. She tells him she doesn’t want to go to the coven tryouts. She wants to try to win the championship belt like he did. He says he goofed off in the past but Amity has a bright future ahead and she shouldn’t waste her time with the Brawl.
Amity tells Luz of her disappointment. She would have loved to share something nice with Alador, not the tryouts. Luz tells her she’s there to help and she’ll get Amity to the Brawl because she always chooses the “chaotic route”. Oh Luz! Amity blushes. Luz continues, saying if she wins maybe it’ll be the perfect way to tell Alador she doesn’t want to join a coven anymore.
Eda overhears the two and walks in with King saying she used to love going to the Brawl. She remembers Amity’s father being good. Amity uses a spell to make her voice sound like her father and orders the abomination companion to go on a goose chase quest for a dagger.
Ed and Em give Amity their concealment stones, supporting her rebellious choice to participate in the Brawl. Amity’s appearance changes into a fun costume for the event. Meanwhile Eda and King do some digging about Belos on their own. They ask Warden Wrath if he’s heard anything about the Day of Unity or any gossip. He asks why he should help Eda and she takes out her owl claws. Before she could do any damage, security tells her no fighting outside of the competition. King wonders why she gave up so easily but she tells him she has a plan. She pulls out a potions book and turns to a page for a blabber serum.
The competition begins and the host sets the rules. Competitors go one on one for ultimate bragging rights. The last one standing gets to challenge last year’s winner, Warden Wrath, for the championship belt.
Amity is up first with her stage name as The Mighty Mittens. Amity waves to Luz and her siblings in the crowd. Luz blows kisses back. The battle begins and Amity knocks out her competition quickly. Luz gets another notification and gets nervous. Ed and Em notice. Luz tells them she’s going to sign up for the Brawl too.
Amity is confused by the new plan and asks Luz if everything is okay. She tells Luz that Eda told her it was a special day for her. Luz brushes it off and tells her not to worry. Luz!!! You got to let Amity in!! Ed and Em agree to try to help the two as they compete. Em is going to cast healing spells while Ed is relegated to cheering them on when his spell fails. As he walks away, he spots a trap laid out by Eda and King. He realizes the flaw in their trap and helps fortify it. They realize he could be an asset to getting the required items for the serum. Boosting his confidence, he agrees to help.
Luz has her match up next as The Spellraiser. Amity and Em cheer her on. Using her glyphs she takes on her challenger. She even gets to use the new spell from earlier to protect her from a bad fall. Luz quickly knocks out the competitor.
Eda, King and Ed continue their traps, gathering the items needed for the serum. Amity takes on her next challenger. Eda, King and Ed keep checking items off their list. Luz is up for another fight and wins again. Eda, King and Ed having collected the items they need stir the potion. Eda tries to explain why she’s doing the spell. As Eda runs off to get more fuel to keep the fire going, Ed and King bond over feeling useful.
Em heals Amity’s wounds while Luz is pumped up on adrenaline. Amity and Em try to concentrate and try to get Luz to back off a bit so they can focus. Luz settles down but begins to sit alone with her thoughts again. She tries to come up with another distraction. The reminder on her phone goes off again and she quickly says she’s going to go on a walk. Amity seems concerned.
As Luz walks off, she sees the abomination has returned with the dagger it was tasked with finding and heads towards Amity. Luz tries to stop it and its siren begins to go off, making a similar sound to her phone’s notification. She tells it to get out of her head and slams a glyph on the ground in a rage. She flies up and knocks the siren off its head. Amity arrives and asks if she touched the abomination because her dad put sensors and alarms in it in case she tried to do something. Luz lies and says she hadn’t. They head back to the Brawl.
The warden is up next against Amity. The warden takes his mask off letting out a roar and a burst of fire. Suddenly Alador enters the ring and declares that Amity is forfeiting. Amity asks how he found out about the Brawl and he tells her that someone set off the alarm and he followed it to the Brawl. Amity asks Luz if she lied to her. Luz tells her that she didn’t want to worry her. Amity says she was already worried but now she’s also in trouble. Again, she asks what’s wrong. Luz looks away and tells Amity it’s nothing.
The warden says he’s had enough and is ready to fight. He launches at Amity, Alador and Luz. Her father uses his abominations to knock him down. The host declares the belt goes to Alador, but before he can finish speaking, Alador says he already has one and walks off leaving the host stunned. Alador tells Amity to get her sibling and that they’re leaving. Amity tells him she’s not going anywhere with him, slapping his hand away. She then uses a spell to take a disappearing spell out of Luz’s pocket and says she’s not going anywhere with either of them. She holds her breath, disappears and runs off. Her father looks on, shocked and Luz chases after Amity.
King and Ed see Wrath is tied up and Ed declares it’s the perfect time to give him the serum. King warns him that it’s not ready yet. He pours fire bee honey into the pot and it shoots out a massive flame. He tells King to get Eda and he’s going to head towards Wrath with the serum.
Luz spots Amity’s face mask on the ground and finds her sadly sitting under a tree. Luz asks if she can sit with her. Amity laments that she looked forward to the Brawl and showing her dad what she can do, but then Luz joined, messed with the abomination and lied to her about it. Plus she knows Luz was acting weird all day. She asks if it has to do with the human realm. Luz relents and says she didn’t wanna talk about it because it happened a long time ago. She hands Amity her phone. She clicks the notification and it says the event is an anniversary. The location, Gravesfield Graveyard. Today is the anniversary of her dad passing away. :(((((
Luz tells Amity it’s not an excuse for what she did. Her father used to always give them flowers on their birthdays so after he died, Luz and her mom would pick flowers for each other. Then they’d visit his grave and spend the day together. This is the first time she’s not with her mom and she doesn’t have any flowers. When Amity told her about the issue with her own dad, she thinks she felt jealous and needed a distraction.
The two hear a commotion. Amity gets up quick and heads in the direction of the sounds. Luz attempts to stand but her legs are weak and she falls back down again. Amity tells Luz she will pick flowers with her and do something special together. Luz blushes and Amity runs off.
Eda arrives and Ed tells her what he did to the recipe. She sees Wrath has transformed into a giant beast. She lets her inner Owl Beast out and tries to see if he’s still in there. He tosses her aside. Amity’s dad sends an abomination to try to hold it down but it gets tossed aside. He attempts to attack it head on and Amity jumps in to help, but he uses a spell to put her behind him with her other siblings. Ed theorizes that maybe using something cold would counteract using something hot like the honey he added. Eda tells Ed that they don’t have time to make a new potion. Just then Luz arrives and says she has a plan. Luz asks Eda, still in her owl form, to give her a lift. Before they take off, Luz tells Amity how happy she is to pick flowers with her.
Amity jumps back into the fray with her dad. Before he can use a spell to move her again, she uses her own spell to hold his arm in place. She then tells him she’s making her own choices from here on out. He tries to butt in but Amity just replies, “you’re welcome” and continues casting spells. The two nod to each other and cast a spell together. Their abominations form together and make a giant abomination, and it holds Wrath down. Eda and Luz fly above. Luz tosses a bunch of ice glyphs in the air and the two touch them all as they fly by. A giant pile of snow falls on Wrath.
Eda pulls Wrath, now back in his normal form, out of the pile of snow. She asks him all the questions she has, but he doesn’t know anything. He confesses he was actually demoted for stealing his coworkers’ lunches and he just wanted to feel in control again at the Brawl. Eda pulls out her claws again. He says he doesn’t know anything about Raine, but apparently the Day of Unity is supposed to unite them with the Titan. He then confesses that some of them don’t think the “new world” will be good for magic. She shoves him back into the pile of snow.
Ed runs up and apologizes to Eda for tinkering with the recipe. She tells him what he created was great because she can now sell it. She tells him he has a future in Wild Magic. Eda tosses him a balled up shirt with “Bad Girl Coven” written on it. As he’s thanking Eda, Em jumps in saying she wants a shirt too!
Amity’s dad asks Amity about not wanting to be in the Emperor’s coven anymore. She tells him it has always been her mom’s dream, not hers. She tells him he didn’t even know she was dating Luz. She blushes and crosses her arms. She tells him that he’s too busy making monsters for the Emperor to notice anything and her mom is too busy trying to dye her hair green. He stutters and says he likes her hair color because it is abomination colored. She asks if he’ll tell mom that and he promises he will. She says it’s a start and they shake hands.
Luz is on her knees on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean, picking flowers. Amity approaches and asks if she found any good ones, and she says she hasn’t. Amity draws a plant glyph in the ground but only a small vine appears. She asks how Luz does it. Luz says she should have thought of that first but her heads been on backwards all day. She draws a better glyph and flowers begin to bloom. She picks them and asks what to do next. Amity conjures an abomination balloon. Luz ties the flowers to it and lets it fly off as the wind blows. Amity wonders if it will reach the human realm. Luz says it probably doesn’t work that way, but it’s a nice thought. They hold hands and watch the flowers float away.
In the human realm, Luz’s mom places a flower in a vase on the windowsill. Vee is at the table mixing something in a bowl. Camila takes a deep breath and looks out into the night sky.
What an episode. It was disarmingly emotionally complex in many ways. I was especially caught off guard by the big emotional reveal twist too. I expected the notification to be something innocent like an annual vacation or holiday which was causing Luz to act off. The reveal that the anniversary was for her fathers passing was such a punch to the gut. Luz is such a strong person, seeing her down like that was heartbreaking.
I can’t imagine what it must be like for a girl like Luz, so young, and in this beyond belief situation which is keeping her from her own mother. It’s got to be extra hard for Camila too. Just seeing her in the final moments of the episode was extremely touching. I like how they showed us that Vee is still with her, and is in her natural form, rather than her impersonation of Luz. This show has such a way of making normal yet extraordinary moments feel so relatable.
While Luz acting the way she did was understandable, even she was aware she could have handled it better. She should know by now that she can lean on Amity. They’ve done it before and it only strengthens their bond together. The fact that Amity was going through something with her own father must have been especially rough on Luz. I hope the two can take this moment and truly become even closer and bonded together so they can continue to be there for each other, even when they can’t vocalize it in the moment.
I like how Eda and King know something is up with Luz themselves and can also be a support for Luz. Even at the Brawl they take it upon themselves to try and get information for Luz by targeting Wrath. It probably helped that getting information from him could also help her try to understand what is going on with Raine as Eda is clearly uncomfortable with the way Raine is acting since they recently reconnected, then became icy again. I was a bit disappointed again in the fact that King and his own father’s issues weren’t tied into the episode again, but I have a feeling we’ll get more information about that again. This half of the season has focused a lot on issues with parental figures.
It was extremely enjoyable to see the way the series keeps softening up Ed and Em. They really love their sister and love how she is becoming less uptight, and is enjoying herself more. The reveal that they have been using magic to keep their own appearances up was a great moment. Seeing them with zits and struggle facial hair was hilarious. We even see them more vulnerable than ever when they don’t have to keep those appearances up. Ed finds more confidence in himself, Em finds value in helping her sister.
The series truly shines in these relatable moments. The Owl House is such a gem and I constantly look forward to the next new episode. I cannot wait to see what comes next week with “Them’s the Breaks, Kid”
The Owl House Season 2 airs Saturday mornings on Disney Channel. New episodes can be streamed on Disney Now.
