#might post my design for leshy next | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fermented-writers-block · 4 years

Text

Who and what is Kikimora?

Although she has only made a single appearance in the show with just barely three lines to her name, Kikimora is an interesting character to me in what her apparent position and possible inspirations could mean in terms of the overall plot and history of the Boiling Isles going forward.

Starting off, it is interesting to note how, so far, Kikimora is THE most respected character we’ve actually seen in the show - as Belos has yet to make an official appearance - as well as having one of the biggest yet understated impacts on the plot. Of course, the former can be inferred by how Lilith - THE leader of the best of the best witches outside of Emperor Belos himself - defers to her in a subservient manner, but for someone with such little screentime, Kikimora’s appearance set into motion an impending deadline that Lilith now has to fulfill soon if she wants Belos’ end of their promise.

Additionally, it’s a subtle detail, but Kikimora’s use of just Lilith’s first name implies a ton of familiarity between the two and or that Kikimora is much, MUCH higher ranking than Kikimora in the hierarchy. As for figuring out what position she fills, well:

She is most likely Belos’ right hand woman after all, and quite literally at that.

However, besides the literal wordplay of her design, I’ve been looking into the origins of her name and found that "kikimora" refers to a kind of spirit within Slavic mythology of which there are two kinds: one from the forest married to the spirit Domovoi,and the other from the swamp married to the spirit Leshy.

There's conflicting accounts on whether kikimora are evil or simply a difficult spirit to appease between the sources I could find, but a common thread seems to be a close association with spinning and being a symbol of impending misfortune with her psychic abilities.

However, what I find most interesting and what I’d like to focus on here is the way she is most commonly depicted in terms of appearance. Between the unclear translated details of her exact stance and attitude towards humans, all of the sources I’ve seen more or less agree that she is a kind of powerful house spirit that is small enough to pass through keyholes, and that she is either a goddess of or are highly associated with chickens - sometimes bearing chicken feet like the ones in the drawn rendition below:

As to why I find this detail interesting, for those of you who haven’t been following my discussions with my friend @sepublic, we have been working on plotting out the various possible narrative parallels between the characters of The Owl House and the in-universe characters of the Good Witch Azura series for a while now, with Luz and Amity being Azura and each other’s Hecate, Eda and Lilith as the old lady/mentor figure, and King and Emperor Belos as the likely small animal companions/proclaimed group leader.

With these parallels established, I have come to the conclusion that there is a FOURTH set of characters - one whose correlation in the Azura books we’ve yet to see or hear about, but will play an important role in both the overall Owl House plot and the in-universe Azura series - of which Kikimora makes up one half on Amity’s side.

Assuming that Kikimora takes a decent amount of inspiration from her namesake in a number of ways, the most likely candidate for her parallel that I can see is - as surprising as it may seem - none other than Hooty, aka this goofball:

TLDR: Why I think both Hooty and Kikimora might turn out to be/have been bird-themed deity-like entities supporting their respective rulers, or how the epic kaiju fights were in our houses all along

To explain what I mean, with the major fan theory that King used to be the Titan/an actual king of demons and some of the recent character interactions these last few episodes, I believe that Hooty and Kikimora might be even more similar than just the mythological connotations behind Kikimora’s namesake.

For a long while now, I have been theorizing that Hooty will turn out to be a powerful owl-like spirit or being with a very severe case of power and memory loss, but to be more specific here, I think that Hooty - or the Owl Deity as I’ve taken to calling the being in the owl mural - used to be King’s second in command.

Here, I think such a revelation would fit well with the kind of misdirection present within The Owl House’s storytelling. After all, for as much as Gus picking Hooty in UW was played as a joke, one must remember that Gus had been looking for THE most interesting, accomplished, and noteworthy person he could get, and it would be just like this show for Hooty to turn out to actually fit that criteria, much like Luz’s “bad girl chosen one” description in WBW being extremely applicable to Amity the next episode.

In a similar vein, while King immediately shutting down Hooty’s declaration to become his recruit in AitE was a quick and funny joke in the moment, Hooty calling himself King’s “faithful pal” and the bonding moment the two shared after the carnage when King found himself ultimately relying on Hooty’s strength in the end feels to me much like the Owl House writers setting up hints for what kind of dynamics the two might have had in the distant past.

Now, I know you must be wondering how exactly this would further tie into Kikimora being parallels with Hooty. Well, the thing about that is that I suspect that both of them played a major role in helping their respective rulers come to power a long, long time ago.

Specifically, as two bird-based deities - not necessarily gods or chicken-based ones per se, but incredibly powerful beings that might have been seen as akin to such - that King and Belos turned to for help in different ways.

I admit that this sounds like a pretty major stretch - especially in regards to Kikimora and her three lines of dialogue - but given the multiple posts of evidence-adjacent details I’ve made for Hooty being the Owl Deity, I think this would make the correlations between the two all the more cleaner.

With King and Hooty, I could see the latter potentially being the former’s first loyal follower and or main enforcer of his will, a reliable friend and powerhouse that King depended on until both of them were overthrown and reduced to the sad state we see them in now.

And with Belos and Kikimora, I could see the former having been a fresh new recruit in King’s army back then, one who became fed up with his arbitrary demands and impulsive abuses of power - much like Private New Guy in AitE - and called upon Kikimora for her help in staging a mutiny against Hooty and King. Meanwhile, I could also see the latter being themed after a different bird within the world of The Owl House than chickens, potentially even being the basis behind Lilith’s corvid iconography and maybe the wings on Belos’ symbol.

That said, to contrast Hooty and King’s relationship, perhaps Kikimora and Belos’ is more transactional in nature befitting how in some folklore, kikimora - when pleased with the family of the house she resides in - apparently serve as their guardians and can warn her family of impending disaster with her powerful psychic talents, whereas only when she is displeased does her mischief to act up for the residents within. As such, Belos may or may not be doing something to make sure he keeps her favor as an asset to use and keep control over her/to enhance her powers, something which possibly could even be connected to the apparent search for items of eternal youth.

Though just to get this clear, I am NOT saying that Kikimora is the real mastermind behind everything while Belos is a mere figurehead. Rather, I’m suggesting that Belos and Kikimora might be more like business partners in crime compared to the possible past friendship Hooty and King might have had.

Furthermore, to develop Hooty and Kikimora even more as foils of each other, I think it would be rather fitting if the latter was revealed to have been in this picture the whole time as Belos’ castle itself:

After all, I’ve made note before of how the majority of the Owl House looks like it used to be a portion of a large “Owl Temple,” so considering how Hooty is the house itself and how Amity and Luz’s groups are positioned on opposing extremes, it would make sense if Kikimora leaned into the “house spirit” aspect of her inspiration by being Belos’ castle itself - or at least, being able to animate it, that is.

I mean, there IS always the possibility that she will stay closer to her inspirations and be a separate entity from Belos’ castle - aka where she’s still capable of traveling through keyholes and that’s how Kikimora was involved with Belos’ mutiny by sneaking through Hooty’s mouth entranceway - but personally, I think it’d be rather fitting if in a reversal of folklore kikimoras, she was the keyhole of Belos’ castle instead.

After all, if she IS the castle like Hooty is the Owl House and both of them turn out to be deity/bird-like beings, then I predict that we might get to see a clash of the titans somewhere down the line after Hooty regains his former form and memories - potentially even having gotten back the rest of the Owl Temple to more evenly match Kikimora in scale for a battle of epic proportions.

Overall, to summarize, I think Kikimora and Hooty will turn out to be parallels in terms of being powerful bird-themed deity-like entities, being capable of becoming and or already being giant “castle/temple demons,” and being/having been the respective second-in-command of Belos and King.

As for how they would contrast with the other, it’s too early to tell with how little we know of Kikimora at the moment, but judging from how the other characters between Amity and Luz’s groups parallel each other, it will be rather interesting to see how her personality and motives might serve as a reflection to that of the Owl Deity across the extremes of individualism vs conformity.

#the owl house #owl house #the owl house theory #owl house theory #the owl house hooty #emperor belos #kikimora #theory #speculation #amnesiac owl deity hooty theory #long post #VERY long post #you would not believe how long I've been sitting on this post #man do I hate it when my blog's tagline kicks me in the butt for months on end #anyways I hope you'll enjoy these thoughts and ramblings of mine

215 notes · View notes