#-due to my own selfishness and bigotry' thing philips got going on

[welcometogrouchland]

Also what if I said the show taking time to show that Luz and Hunter aren't unhealthily dependent on one another post time skip the way they were in thanks to them (but still close seen in Luz's patches on her clothes or Hunter taking time off work to go to Luz's bday) actually plays in to the cycle of sibling betrayal motif w/ the Clawthornes and Wittebanes????

#ramblings of a lunatic #the owl house #toh #luz noceda #hunter toh #bc like. both of the previous generations of siblings had incredibly small/non-existant support networks outside of each other #the wittebanes were orphans and bc Caleb was philips caretaker as well as his brother #(and also just kinda. a pattern with philip) #he loves caleb on the condition that he agrees with and stays with philip. and when Caleb stops meeting these conditions love is revoked #in the form of. yknow. murder and cloning and then murdering the clones #bc again it's less about the ambiguous abandonment and more about the 'living a life i don't agree with and therefore can't be part of- #-due to my own selfishness and bigotry' thing philips got going on #a mindset that would be understandable for a powerless child but is ridiculous coming from a 400 year old god king #Lilith is ALSO in a state of preoccupation and arrested development when we meet her! #the thing that drove a wedge between the Clawthorne sisters was the fact that they were no longer each others codependent supports #Eda had Raine and is clearly closer/at least gets more undivided attention from their parents #not that eda's life is all rainbows and sunshine- she's still an outcast. but she has people other than Lilith #everything we see from the gallery nucleus art to edas old photos portrays the hagsquad as eda's friendgroup. not Lilith's #and years later in s1 even when Lilith is at the top of the boiling isles social latter she's still hung up on Eda #both bc of her guilt but bc she seemingly has no friends who are also her equals #she wants her codependent support system back no matter the damage it'll cause to Eda #bc much like philip she's sort of in a state of arrested development #it's a theme with toh antagonists #the difference being Lilith tried to grow up too fast and was never able to move beyond her teenage conceptualisation of maturity #so she's good at pretending to be mature when really she's not #all this to say that Luz and Hunter don't have this problem outside of thanks to them when they're at their self-hate peak #luz has her mom her owl fam Amity Willow Gus. Hunter now has Camila Gus and Willow and eventually Darius #they don't NEED to be the only one the other can count on and bc of that they're not gonna lose their shit when the other does something- #-they feel they can't/don't want to be a part of #anyway I'm out of tags but. this was a good move writing wise actually even if i love their dynamic. we got a whole special abt them

[moth-from-the-void]

The Owl House Finale: my thoughts

! spoilers, obviously !

I thought it was alright.

Which is pretty sad considering how freaking good the show was.

Now it's difficult to make a list of things I liked and things I didn't like and you will see why.

But for tradition's sake:

things I liked

the overall idea of it with Belos taking over the titan's corpse and all that, pretty dang awesome

not making the Collector an actual villain and instead showing how they're really just a child lashing out because he doesn't know how to deal with these complex emotions

the amount of lore we got on the Collector and titan magic

the ending/post-credit scene, seeing everyone happy and healing without it being a super cliché "and suddenly everything's okay" thing was cool, the character designs were on fucking point and I especially liked the scene with Hunter and Willow at Flapjack's gravestone

Raine being an absolute BAMF, I love them and they fucking rule

Hunter and Darius reuniting, short but sweet

on that note: Darius and Alador in the credits?? hello, sassy middle-aged dads having a thing™??? love to see it

Raine and Eda reuniting, just these two, man

King's genderqueer/genderfucked/whatever parent? marvellous

Luz and Amity getting their happy ending without some random, annoying pseudo break-up plot point or something thrown in there

now, things I didn't like

The pacing was fucking atrocious and really dims all the other aspects I liked, just scene after scene after scene.

In a big character-driven finale like this it's vital to give the emotional impact time to develop, to let it breathe, let the audience sit with a hard-hitting scene like when Luz 'dies' going up against Belos.

And this obviously isn't Dana's or any of the team's fault, it's clearly because of the mouse and the way it disrespects and seems to straight up despise its own creators.

Especially for a show like this where we get the most amount of openly shown queer affection in the final minutes of the final episode of a show that was cut short for "not fitting the brand". Of course Owl House is revolutionary in its portrayal of queerness in a Disney show but the shadow of the mouse looms large and can be felt even here which is just, it's tragic, man, seriously.

The pacing is also what causes my other big problem with the finale: the hollow victory.

Well of course Luz has defeated Belos at the end, has liberated the BI, healing can take place, rebuilding can start.

But it feels hollow. Of course Luz epically destroys Coloniser McGoo and seeing Raine, Eda and King stomp on him was funny. But I feel there was a distinct lack of catharsis here.

Now this might be because from the beginning of this show I've been firmly in camp villain-enjoyer and was really excited about how they were gonna develop Belos as a villain but I didn't like the lack of "depth" regarding him we got in the finale.

Now I'm not talking about the Philip Wittebane sob story or the power of love, friendship and redemption or anything, puritan fascist man can rot in fucking hell forever, but it feels like Luz didn't actually defeat him.

Belos went from representing a larger system of beliefs about the world (human supremacy, colonisation, religious dogma, the absolutely batshit ideas underlying the concept of killing and then resurrecting your own brother "for his own good", etc.) to just like big kaiju slime wreaking havoc and spitting magic fire.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good epic fight against just a huge gross monster that wants to destroy the world (which yes, Belos ultimately is) but not when that happens at the cost of your villain's complexity.

Because now Luz has destroyed this huge evil slime thing, but that could've been any other villain or monster, it lacks that narrative oomph of defeating Belos as a character who represents bigotry, intense selfishness, abuse and ultimately a worldview in which some people are destined for annihilation due to their perceived inferiority.

This is because, at least in my opinion, Belos' strength as a villainous character isn't his magic or anything like that, it is his prowess in manipulation and the way he can make other characters believe that his depraved views are correct. I much rather would've liked that Luz and him had had a verbal standoff before actually fighting, him preying on her fears of being just like him and having those resolved together with his defeat instead of being seemingly resolved in that Collector dream sequence at the beginning.

Because it now seems like Luz' emotional arc is divorced from her fight against the main villain of this whole show which to me feels very unsatisfactory. A villain or obstacle is what drives the narrative, it's what provokes the protagonist(s) into action and especially Luz and Belos had this well-written dynamic with both being humans but extremely different from each other, yet Luz feeling terrible because she helped Philip discover the light glyph. That was cool, that was interesting and removing that element feels kind of boring to me.

It makes it feel like Belos and the system he represents were never really defeated, like Philip Wittebane is dead as he should be but the concept of "Belos" lives on, which could've been interesting if properly developed, but then again there wasn't enough time to do that.

Ultimately I feel it's on a surface level a pretty decent finale for a series like this, it hit all the right beats and tied this amazing show up as best as it could.

On the other hand I personally feel that it was hindered from being a finale this awesome show truly deserves by the mouse. Imagine how good it could've been if it had the time to develop the plot at a slower pace, if the show could've taken its time to develop the lore and the emotional beats of the story instead of giving last-minute exposition dumps and trying to fit all its eggs in one basket over the course of a measly 45 minutes.

It was good, but it could've been great, and that's just tragic.

I'm looking forward to any future projects by Dana Terrace because her and the team are truly brilliant artists and I hope their next projects will work out without all this corporate meddling.

Finally I want to say that obviously this was all just my opinion, I'm not pretending to speak the ultimate gospel truth and if you loved the finale that's cool, if you hated it that's also cool, you can have whatever opinion you like. This wasn't some sort of essay to convince anyone of my position, it was just me rambling about a show I like and maybe over time my opinions will change, this show is by no means a hill I'm willing to die on.

Don't take this post all too seriously and have a great day :)

#the owl house #toh spoilers #toh finale #my opinion #ramble from the void #long post #original post #might elaborate more on this another day if i ever feel like it