"Look, kid. Everyone wants to believe they're "chosen". But if we waited around for a prophecy to make us special, we'd die waiting. That's why you need to choose yourself".
"Well you're the one here and you seem like a good witch. But I can't give you anything unless you choose to accept it. So the question is, will you choose yourself?"
Luz means "light", while Hunter was named by Belos in accordance with witch hunters:
Their encounters with one another in Hunting Palismen and Hollow Mind would set future events in motion:
and also led up to Luz telling him "You're family now":
What happened in Thanks to Them reflects the Hollow Mind paintings shown below:
Belos took both of their lives, and we hear a contrast between Luz saying "I feel like I should be used to this by now, but...I still don't know what to say" and Hunter expressing the desires which he never dared to express in Belos's throne room, since the Titan had yet to pass the wisdom of choosing oneself to Luz:
They were pulled out of the water in which they were sinking, by the parent of their adoptive sibling (who also cared about them deeply):
The loved ones who revived them, passed them the last of their strength in order for these kids to have new life:
And King's dad asked Luz to choose whether she'd receive his life force which he offered, while Belos coercively violated Hunter to use his body like he would a puppet.
The things that Luz and Hunter went through, in parallel, underscore the clash between Belos who told endless lies about the Titan's will, and the Titan himself - King's father - who had very different plans for the Isles. Caught in between:
They were put through so much.
(The big comparison post I made before thinking of this analysis - it's just a picset and not a meta/analysis - is here: link)
Having an “I like this less now that some time has passed and the hype died down” moment-
I saw someone criticize how they don’t like that Luz did actually turn out to be a chosen one, the Titan literally did choose to show her the glyphs while hiding them from Philip- Honestly, I’m starting to agree. Sure, she wasn’t chosen by some undefined forces of destiny, but she was literally chosen by the island - the world itself basically.
The “choosing yourself” message would’ve been stronger if the glyphs were always there for anyone to find, and the reason Luz found them is because she chose to take Eda’s advice and pay attention to her surroundings and immerse herself in the environment of the Isles, and she genuinely appreciated it all, whereas it took Philip years to find all the glyphs and he had to be given the last one by Luz because to him they were just a means to an end, he had no affection for or interest in the magic or the world around him - he despised them, actually, he wanted them gone - which is why he never tried to connect with them.
(And the reason other witches and demons didn’t find the glyphs is because most of them don’t need to search for alternatives to typical magic powers, since most of them have the ability to use magic naturally, and if they lose that ability they likely just rely on their staff from then on and assume there are no alternatives. Or maybe some people did come across a glyph or two, but didn’t realize their significance, assuming they were just a cool pattern. This works especially with something like a snowflake)
Luz could’ve still met the Titan in the In-Between Realm, but he could’ve not had the power to choose who gets to find the glyphs and who doesn’t, with who ends up finding them and how long it takes them to do it depending on those people’s own choices, like actively choosing to immerse themselves in the environment and try to connect with it.
The Titan being able to literally choose whether to show the glyphs or not undercuts the idea of “choosing yourself”, because whether you get to find them or not now also depends on whether he likes you or not, because regardless of what choices you’ve made, if he happens not to like you and not feel like showing the glyphs to you, you won’t get to find them. And we know he’s not some purely objective infallible being, he’s a person, and we know for a fact that he has made mistakes and misjudged people, for example imprisoning the Collector.
Since it’s been almost 2 months since “Watching and Dreaming” aired, I figured it was about time I put the rest of my GIFs I made that I had to whittle out of my original post. Enjoy! ^_^ <3<3<3
WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT OI OI OI HOLD UP A SWEET FUCKING HOT POCKET SECOND. King’s father’s whole “oh Belos is just evil and has always been ig” shtick. Isn’t that logic the same as BELOS’S?!! That’s why he does everything? Cause he thinks witches and demons are the creations of Satan (or something like that ig who needs properly explained motivations in fiction anyway)? And that by their mere existences witches and demons cause misery and suffering? And that the only way humanity can be safe and freed from their potential influence is through all their collective deaths?!! DANA AND CO YOU HAVE TO BE SHITTING ME-