The Owl House

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The Owl House
"Welcome to the Owl House! With a dark side..."
Genre: Adventure Dark fantasy Dungeonpunk Horror comedy-drama Isekai Magical girl Running Time: 22 minutes (Season 1 and 2) 44 (Season 3) Country: United States Release Date: January 10, 2020 – April 8, 2023 Network(s): Disney Channel Created by: Dana Terrace Distributed by: Disney-ABC Domestic Television Starring: Sarah-Nicole Robles Wendie Malick Alex Hirsch Seasons: 3 Episodes: 43

The Owl House is an American animated fantasy horror-comedy television series created by Dana Terrace and produced by Disney Television Animation. It premiered on Disney Channel on January 10, 2020.

The second season premiered on June 12, 2021 consisting of 21 chapters.

The Owl House has also been renewed for a third and final season, consisting of 3 44-minute specials, in the same time, and premiered on October 15, 2022 and ended on April 8, 2023, ending the show for good.

Plot

Self-assured teenager Luz stumbles upon a portal to the demonic magical realm of the Boiling Isles, where she befriends a rebellious witch, Eda, and a tiny warrior, King; despite not having magical abilities, Luz pursues her dream of becoming a witch by serving as Eda's apprentice.

Why It's Magical

1. The concept of a human being trapped and adventuring in a weird and grotesque world is awesome, similar to another Disney show, Amphibia.
2. Beautiful and fluid animation, especially during Eda and Lilith's battle in "Covention" or during the climax of "Enchanting Grom Fright".
   • Other good examples are the kiss between Luz and Amity on Clouds on the Horizon, all of the Collector appearances as a shadow and the fight between the main characters and Belos in Thanks to Them.
3. Art style that is a pastiche to anime.
   • As well, the setting reminded us of very good dark or high fantasy stories in the 20th century.
4. Smart writing, comedy, and dialogue.
5. Interesting, very attractive, and deep plots. And the interesting aspect is that despite the fact that the show mainly focused on slice-of-life plots (at least in the first season) it still managed to fix in action elements that made the show actually flow better than some genuine story-driven shows. And when the series itself became a story-driven one, it still had an amazing flow and pacing, even now with all of the deeper and more complex arcs that the show was now dealing with.
6. Well-written and lovable characters.
   • Luz Noceda is relatable to many due to her being an awkward, loner teen with niche interests. She finally fits in upon her arrival to the Boiling Isles, and eventually gets character development later on in season one.
   • Eda the Owl Lady is a snarky mentor to Luz who genuinely cares about her and that begins to become more and more of a maternal figure for Luz.
   • King is hilarious, as he's a small demon who claims he's the king of demons, and tries to be a ruler but fails. This was later abandoned, and now King is now trying to find his father, after his origins episode.
   • Amity Blight is one of the most well-written bully characters in animation. She is mean to Luz, but she's just overly ambitious and a perfectionist in trying to get into a good coven, and she also deals with pressure & competition from her older siblings Edric and Emira. Later on, she becomes nicer to Luz and even falls in love with her.
   • Lilith, Eda's sister and now former enemy, is revealed indeed really and truly regret putting her sister into a curse, that turned her into an Owl Sphinx-like demonic monster. And in the early season 2 episode, she finally experiences the curse she makes her sister, which by turned into a Crow Sphinx-like demonic monster.
7. Brilliant voice acting, especially Gravity Falls creator, Alex Hirsch as King and Hooty or Wendie Malick as Eda Clawthorne.
8. Action-packed theme song and peacefully calmed credits song.
9. Balances action, comedy, drama, horror, and heart all at the same time. And despite the show's enormous amount of genres to balance out, it still manages to pull off all of the genres amazingly well.
   • As well, using the Dungeonpunk and Mythpunk tropes and elements to give a more unique flavor to an animated Disney show.
10. On top of that, it also manages to have lots of compelling lore and world-building alongside being slice-of-life at times.
11. Good morals, like being yourself and questioning systems that unfairly reward power to others.
12. The show's handling of using its LGBT theme is excellent and it's not afraid of showing it off. Instead of using it as pandering (implied to be non-heterosexual, but not shown onscreen), unlike its corporate owner, Walt Disney Company is doing this throughout the 2010s and early 2020s.
    • The famous scene when Amity kisses Luz, gives a true representation of LGBTQ even further. AND IT SHOWS.
13. Just like Amphibia, everything comes together very well with the final two-parter episodes of season one.
    • In fact, the show's quality greatly improves in the second season, having better and stronger episodes according to most fans.
14. Even if the show got shortened on season 3, the show's staff managed to continue the plot in a good and non-rushed way.
15. The final episode, Watching and Dreaming, is excellent and is often considered one of the greatest finales in a Disney show.

Bad Qualities

1. The show has recycled some plot elements from its spiritual predecessor Gravity Falls for its own flavor, like the episode "Really Small Problems" almost copies "Little Dipper", due of being both major plots revolve around the main characters' (Luz and King/Dipper and Mabel) shrinking into a smaller size by a magical object (shrinking potion/modified height-altering crystal flashlight). And later captured by a recurring antagonist from both shows (Tibbles/Gideon) for their own amusements, much later in the episode.
   • It doesn't help since (like we said) the concept is similar to Amphibia.
2. Lilith being the one who cursed Eda, in the season 1 finale, rather than other potential suspects is a rather cliché reveal.
   • Similarly like Amphibia with Andrias Leviathan, the plot twist reveals that Emperor Belos is actually Philip Wittbane (the supposedly first human to visit the Boiling Isles) all along is mostly predictable and also overused, despite the being foreshadowed all over the 2.5/4ths of the second season, and fits the theme of one of the show messages, "Don't just everyone/authority". This creates a weirdly fridge logic/probable plot hole, that the reason, he is still alive is due to he being consumed the witches' palimans over the centuries as a way to get revenge on all the witches and their descendants, over possibly related to his brother, Celeb, that both of them visit the Isles. Along, despite working alongside them, currently as the "non-wild" witch Emperor Belos, this didn't somehow, get his character development unintentionally? (via his fake persona, becomes the new persona, through the last forty-nine years?)
3. It isn't immune to weak episodes (i.e. "Something Ventured, Something Framed", "Sense and Insensitivity", “Once Upon a Swap”, "Really Small Problems", or even the first episode itself "A Lying Witch and a Warden").
4. Plot Hole: If legally only the members of the emperor's coven can use more than one type of magic and only the emperor himself can combine them, then why would the principal of Hexside somehow allow Luz to study all the types of magic as well as the detention students study and combine two of them? All this over, a fake educational inspector who was actually a greater basilisk attacking their school?
   • In the episode "Yesterday's Lie", how did Vee (another but young basilisk, that reveals to be impersonating Luz in the Earth realm throughout Seasons 1 and a quarter of 2) just apparently assumed to be reopening Eda's portal door, despite in the very first episode, was pretty clear, that Eda keeps the door's key in her hair during and after they left before the guards trying to take Eda, and latter was too quick to get in before was too late. Thus making it very unlikely that Vee gets to the other side of the portal door to Earth in perfect time. Along with her plan on getting there, trying to inside her tent to reach that portal door, could've been not working well, as means to blow her cover in the daylight and again, around by a few guards who could imminently catch her back to the Emperor's Coven, especially she didn't disguise herself as part of Eda's customers and either the three, Eda, Luz, and Owlbert.
5. Executive meddling: The third and final season has been in hindsight to be unfortunately and very unnecessarily cut short unlike the sixth season of Ed, Edd n Eddy, as one of few executives at Disney think the show doesn't fit their "Disney Channel's brand," and thus had it semi-canceled of sorts.
6. It can get boring quickly and somewhat formulaic (through in a horror-comedy way) in the first few episodes of season 1 before something interesting happens, this was later fixed in season 2.

Reception

Since it's premiere, The Owl House has received widespread critical acclaim from both critics and audiences alike, and has become particularly notable for its LGBTQ+ representation compared to other Disney media, including becoming one of the first Disney property to feature a same-sex couple in leading roles (along with Andi Mack). The series also won an award for Children's & Youth Programming at the 2021 Peabody Awards. It has a 8.2/10 on IMDb, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 4/5 on Common Sense Media.

During its run, the show has been considered by many one of the greatest Disney shows in recent times.

Trivia

• Luz Noceda is based on Dana's roommate and show's story artist and consultant, Luz Batista.
• Dana Terrace once dated the voice actor for King and Hooty, and creator of Gravity Falls, their previous work together (as story revisionist/artist for Dana), Alex Hirsch, as her romantic partner since 2015 until somewhere between 2020–22.
• During a charity live-stream and interview alongside with Amphibia's creator, she has retroactively retcon that Luz is suffering from ADHD, and was heavily implied to originally suffered from a presumably fictitious unnamed neurodevelopmental disorder, prior to her research of ADHD, due to her fans has noticed some similarities to the disorder.
• Fortunately, everybody was rumored that the second part of the second season of The Owl House is finally returning in March this year, and ended in May.
• Due to season 3 being one of the most anticipated seasons of all time and most people being hyped by said season, the second episode was leaked before its release, which even led to Dana Terrace and other fans ask to not publish the leaks.

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